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SIMPLES 






SIMPLES 

by 

IAN IRONS 



New York 

THOMAS SELTZER 
1924 







Copyright, 1924, by 
THOMAS SELTZER, Inc. 


All rights reserved 



©Cl A807650'- 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 

L 






SIMPLES 



Qhapter 1 


1 

S O Aunt Heppie was dead. 

Alban Kent, just back from the Bottom where 
the air blew in scarves, now warm-scented with the 
soft honey-smell of privets, now salt-sharp from 
its leap straight out of the Atlantic, found Rosa¬ 
mund’s letter telling him that Aunt Heppie had 
accomplished the impossible and died. 

His mind was still occupied with the work he had 
just left, the big strip of Belladonna he had added 
to the bigger strip of Yarrow. His thoughts were 
also playing over the sun-patch of simples he had 
passed on the way to the house, old Moap’s favour¬ 
ite child, which he had not the heart to disturb— 
the Sweet Flag, Cuckoo Pint, Rue, Sundew, Sanicle, 
Chervil, Coriander, American Skull Cap, Savory 
. . . What names they had, sounding like old 

ballads! The hand that gripped the open letter 
held a sprig of Rue, the old Rue handed to judges 
when they went into court to ward off jail fever. 

With these things in his mind it was hard to grasp 
so unique a matter as Aunt Heppie’s death. . . . 

“. . . She died undeviatingly Aunt Heppie,” 
Rosamund wrote, “browbeating the doctor, protest¬ 
ing to mother that Earlhampton was no place for 

3 


SIMPLES 


a woman of her degree to end her days in, even 
keeping death firmly in its place ...” 

Rosamund at a touch had recreated Aunt Heppie. 
Alban began to realise the old woman again and her 
devastating meaning. 


11 

Below him, beyond the drowsy-soft sweep of the 
land, the sea in a moving floor of blue and gold 
peridot went breathing gently to a horizon faintly 
pearl-dusted. 

The sun, here as clear as thin, golden cider, 
blurred the cliffs of the Cap in a soft, mealy gold- 
pink. 

The tremendous peace of God rested on the land. 
Quiet—it was beyond quiet, a quietude immense, 
soft, and soothing. Under the sun the reposeful and 
gentle world spread out with the beauty of music in 
its mist of blending colours; blue, green-gold, dull 
green, green as sharp as a shout, brown, biscuit, red, 
olive-green, purple, purple and lilac in some 
shadows, purple with a hint of gold in others. 

Wonderful quiet colours blending with the shy 
and indescribable scents that rose and mingled with 
the beauty of colour and quiet and sun. 

Hard to find Aunt Heppie significant in a place 
and moment like this. 

But she was. She had even led to this. But for 
her ugly harshness this might not have been. 

Queer how even Aunt Heppie’s spitefulness had 

4 


SIMPLES 


led to the happiness of one she looked upon with 
wrath. 

iii 

Everything led back to that venomous word of 
Aunt Heppie’s. Alban with his mind dwelling upon 
his “physicke garden” and all that was bound up in 
it saw that. 

He recalled the moment when everything had 
begun to move in this direction. 

Aunt Heppie the natural precipitator of crises 5 
Aunt Heppie that inevitable pillar of the cloud of 
foreboding; that loom of Fate bulking expectedly 
but always suddenly in the faintly curry-coloured 
gloom of Watchkeep Street} Aunt Heppie that 
Valkyrie with a bustle presaging disaster had come 
on her semi-annual visit to the Kents. 

An important visit fraught with terror this time} 
for she had come to meet and look over—and dis¬ 
approve—Gilda Conroy who had for some months 
been engaged to Edwin Kent. 

It was an understood thing that nobody ever met 
Aunt Heppie at the Central Station. She regarded 
it as an affront. It suggested that she, in her incal¬ 
culable age—how old was she? somewhere between 
seventy and the record of Methuselah, Edwin 
declared—was incapable of taking care of herself. 
And another proof of her eternal hardiness was that 
she walked, ignoring all conveyances. She walked, 

5 


SIMPLES 


so that the chill of her coming had a lingering dread 
from the moment she turned into the old street and 
the Kent on watch in the pot-bellied window 
signalled her dawn. 

Perhaps the whole street realised her. The Kents 
felt it must. As she marched down it she dwarfed 
it with her terrific superiority, her every footfall was 
a trumpet of contempt. 

Ferociously rigid, her unimaginably lean upper 
slopes thin and parched and barren—as though the 
harsh and austere suns of her immense social posi¬ 
tion had scorched her to the purple aridity of a lone 
Himalayan peak—were rooted strongly in vast areas 
of redundant hips that took the mind back through 
decades of fashion to the dim age of the Eugenie 
crinoline—hips startling and brimming over, that 
made of her foundations one vast bell of curves and 
masses. 

Amazing that so much hips should support so little 
—astonishing that Nature should have joined the 
halves of two physically incompatible women into 
this amazing whole. 

Nature had not. The hips were magnificent, but 
they were not Nature. They were not even Aunt 
Heppie. They were Aunt Heppie’s suit-case. That 
inexplicable voluptuousness was Aunt Heppie’s bed- 
guy, and her alpaca apron, her house skirt, her single 
change, her toilet bag, and the rest. 

Aunt Heppie never carried a valise. She carried 
a bit of cord. It was round her waist between her 
6 


SIMPLES 


petticoats, and all that she required for any visit was 
slung to it. 

She took no pride in that act of genius, for she 
was thoroughly accustomed to herself as a living 
example of economy and practicality. And she 
wasn’t eccentric. Only common people, those who 
lived in Earlhampton and not in her Cathedral city, 
for example, were that. 

Camillus Kent called from the window, “There 
she looms, the shy flower of the Cathedral Close, 
the bitter Virgin of Saint Rood.” 

That wasn’t Camillus’s own wit. It was one of 
Edwin’s queer, spontaneous sparkles. Camillus was 
the echo of Edwin. 

Mrs. Kent immediately fluttering: “Camillus, you 
mustn’t. Be careful now. Remember how difficult 
your Aunt is. Let this visit at least be without a 
scene.” 

If Edwin had been there he would have said: 
“What, and deprive her of the sweet wrath that 
makes life happy for her?” But Camillus could 
not rise to that. He only shrank back into a corner 
where he hoped he would escape his aunt’s eye. 

Mrs. Kent peeped out of the window and drew 
back in fright: “She’s here. Quick! One of you open 
the door. Quick . . . before the serv¬ 
ants.” 

Mrs. Kent was terrified lest the servants failed to 
realise that the strangeness of Aunt Heppie’s man¬ 
ner was the fine flavour of aristocracy. They would, 
unless someone forestalled the parlour-maid and 

7 


SIMPLES 


opened the door. Aunt Heppie scorned bells and 
knockers. She signalled her arrival by drawing her 
stout umbrella vigorously along the iron railings in 
front of the house. The clamour seemed to ring 
right through Earlhampton, and it certainly dis¬ 
turbed the servants. 

“Quick,” cried Mrs. Kent again,” she’s prac¬ 
tically here. Do open the door one of you— 
quickly.” 

But none of the Kent children was anxious to 
open the door. Aunt Heppie in her initial impact 
was usually scorifying. They hated her with the 
earnestness begot of fear. That is, all save Alban. 
It was not the least part of Alban’s queerness that 
he could stand up to Aunt Heppie. 

Alban went to the door. 

iv 

Aunt Heppie was indubitably Aunt Heppie from 
the door-mat. Her tart, thin voice pierced through 
the house at once. 

“You, Alban? Don’t you keep a maid?” 

“We want to,” said Alban in his easy, dry voice. 
Camillus giggled, seeing the point. Mrs. Kent, 
frightened, said “Shiss!” 

“Back from your weed patch, I see,” said the bitter 
voice. 

“That one didn’t hurt,” came Alban’s voice. 
Weed’ happens to be the official term for medicinal 

8 


8 I M I‘ L E 8 


herbs, ho 1 can’t feel small. Yes, I’m back from the 
harm to-day.” 

Mr«. Kent was intensely sorry she had let Alban 
open I he door. She moved forward to repair her 
mistake. But Aunt 1 Icppic was not so easily put out. 
She said: 

“Wanting and fribbling away your time like that. 
Scandalous I Ain’t you of any real use?” 

“Oh, yes, I can open the door to you, Aunt.” 
Alban’s voice was slow and genial. Mrs. Kent was 
really in terror at it. 

“Stuff and rubbish,” from Aunt I Icppic. “Any¬ 
body’s job.” 

“Not ifj this house,” the dry voice said. “1 alone 
can sustain the shock.” 

“That’s impertinence,” said Aunt Ileppic, show¬ 
ing no trace of color. She expected that from Karl - 
Hampton, and then she knew Alban — the changeling, 
she called him. “But: you know no better, 1 suppose.” 

“Much better, Aunt, but one naturally accommo¬ 
dates one’s knowledge to the circumstances.” 

Mrs. Kent was in the hall by this, angry with 
herself for allowing Alban to answer the door. 
She ought to have remembered that Alban was 
always a source of trouble. She tried to straighten 
things out, minutes too late, as usual. She held out 
her hands crying with an artificial warmth in the 
hope of thawing the chilly situation. 

“ Aunt/ Aunt Hcppic! You’ve arrived!” 

“Anything wrong with your eyes?” snapped Aunt 
1 feppie. 


9 


SIMPLES 


V 

Mrs. Kent knew that the coming of Aunt Heppie 
into the world had been the dawn of trouble for 
the Kent family. Her husband had made that 
plain. Her husband had said, “Some of us are queer, 
Agnes. Pm rather queer myself.” That was true, 
he had the strangest, wildest ideas, just as Alban 
had now. “But the queerest of us all is Heppie. 
You’ll find her very difficult at times.” 

That was true enough. Only Mrs. Kent won¬ 
dered why her husband had limited Heppie’s diffi¬ 
culties to “times.” Never was she otherwise. 

She knew that now as she looked at the fierce, 
parched visage of her dead husband’s sister. She 
tried to explain that “You’ve arrived” was a figure 
of speech, a tribal call even. 

“Stoopid and meaningless,” said Aunt Heppie. 
“Don’t you take that wrap. I’ll keep my hand on 
that till I’ve got it under lock and key. You’ve 
given me a what-not with a key this time, I hope, 
Agnes.” 

She was by this time actually in the drawing-room, 
chilling the assembled family with the cold, sweep¬ 
ing aristocratic glance of the Cathedral city of Rood. 

“Knew you’d have one o’ these hand-painted mir¬ 
rors in your grate,” she said ferociously. “I’ll lay 
there’s not a house in the whole of Earlhampton 
that hasn’t one.” She sniffed with the fervour of a 
steam exhaust. “To live in Earlhampton is bad 
IO 


SIMPLES 


enough. To be Earlhampton is the devil . . . 
Where’s the girl?” 

vi 

Gilda Conroy was the girl. 

Gilda, with her usual quiet serenity, suffered the 
acid stare of the faded icicles that were Aunt’s eyes. 
Edwin in his quick, lively way must have made Aunt 
Heppie’s character familiar to Gilda, and she was 
not intimidated. The old woman glared at the 
Madonna face with the interest of an adder about 
to strike. One could see that she was determined 
to bend this prospective new member of her deroga¬ 
tory family to her will. One could see, too, that 
Gilda’s refusal to be embarrassed piqued her. 

“Hmmm!” sniffed Aunt Heppie, galled at her 
unsuccess. “Who told me she was a beauty?” 

“Your eyes perhaps,” said Alban, quietly. 

Mrs. Kent signalled wildly with her eyebrows to 
her abnormal son. 

“When I was a girl we had very high standards,” 
began Aunt Heppie. 

“Times have changed,” said Alban, in his amiable 
but unyielding tone. “When William the Con¬ 
queror reigned . . .” 

“Alban, don’t be rude,” cried Mrs. Kent, decisive 
at last. 

“But we’re being rude,” said Alban, unabashed. 
“Aren’t we, Aunt Heppie?” 

Aunt Heppie the tremendous showed no sign. She 
never did—that was the Kent in her. She recog- 


II 


SIMPLES 


nised the Kent in Alban, too. He had the same 
queerness that made her, and had made his father, 
difficult. Perhaps she feared him. He was the 
single one of all Agnes Holla way’s kishload (she 
never publicly admitted her brother had any hand 
in them) who met her on her own ground and with 
her own weapons. Not Oswald the eldest and wool¬ 
liest, not Edwin the nimble-tongued and engaging 
rake, not Dunstan, nor Camillus, nor Ethelfleda, nor 
any of that spineless band of children that had been 
born apparently, as Edwin had put it, in a moment of 
passion begot of reading the Anglo-Saxon instalment 
of somebody’s Outline of History, had ever stood up 
to her and matched her redoubtable rudeness with 
rudeness as redoubtable. This long and gangling 
Alban was alone of obdurate metal. She sheered 
away from him. 

“So,” she sneered to Gilda, “you’re Edwin’s 
intended. Where’s Edwin? Not here, naturally.” 

The family was at once looking down its nose and 
shutting its lips tight as usual at the mention of that 
gay, wayward, jolly, but utterly unreliable spark, 
Edwin. It was Mrs. Kent who said with an effort 
at airiness, “He’s out at present.” 

“And on no good business, I’ll lay,” said the old 
termagant. 

“On the firm’s, I imagine,” said Mrs. Kent, 
coldly. 

And then Ethelfleda crashed in in wild, brainless 
defence of her beloved brother: “He simply had to 
go to Brackenhurst. He told me so.” 

12 


SIMPLES 


Dead silence then. Ethelfleda had lived right 
up to her splendid capacity for putting her foot in 
it. Alban was frowning blackly, staring at Mrs. 
Kent, and Mrs. Kent was avoiding Alban’s gaze, 
in fear. 

Aunt Heppie had at once made a horrible moment 
worse with her ghastly bluntness. 

“You don’t tell me he’s still seeing the widow 
creature?” she said, and she grinned wolfishly at 
Gilda. “What do you find in a raffish young man 
like that?” 

Alban said without his usual touch of amiability: 

“There are times, Aunt Heppie, when even your 
vulgarity goes beyond the limits of endurance.” 

“Ho!” she snarled, and she glared at him like 
an aged snake. “Who asked your opinion?” 

“You are going to have it, asked or not. You are 
a detestable old tyrant, and your questions are un¬ 
warrantably impertinent.” 

“Ho!” Aunt Heppie snorted again. “You the 
girl’s defender? You her sweetheart? You her 
intended?” 

She said it with venom and her face showed imme¬ 
diate satisfaction. Alban’s lean, thrusting features, 
the blue, dreamy, speculative eyes that had become 
steel-points of anger suddenly winced. Hot colour 
poured into the cheeks and climbed the high, narrow 
forehead. And Alban knew what it meant, and the 
family, and perhaps Gilda, too. 

That was the moment when it became apparent 
that Alban loved Gilda. 

13 


SIMPLES 


For a fleeting second his physical betrayal lasted. 
Then: 

“That’s a damned . . 

“Shut up, Alban,” said Oswald, who had just come 
in. “Do you hear? Shut up! Better get out of 
the room.” 

Alban swept round on his heel and carried his 
figure at a little run out of the room. 

Aunt Heppie had triumphed. She had justified 
her office as a stirrer-up of trouble. She had exposed 
Alban’s unsuspected love for his brother’s fiancee. 
She was filled with the dry joy of satisfaction. No 
more need to cause disturbance. Beyond pointing 
out that a silver Queen Anne teapot was a replica of 
one she had at Rood, and therefore not at all com¬ 
patible with Mrs. Kent’s station in life, her visit 
passed off in satisfied calm. 

Her words had started the thing, and from thence 
on the crisis developed. 


14 


Qhapter II 


i 

P ERHAPS it would be truer to say that although 
Aunt Heppie’s words precipitated the tragedy, 
all the ingredients were already there, had, in fact, 
been accumulating ever since Alban was born. 

Alban had always been different, the queer one of 
the family. He had ideas outside the ordinary, that 
is the family, understanding. 

“He is just like his father at times,” Mrs. Kent 
would say to Oswald, her eldest, her dearest, the boy 
who had the fine, solid, woolly, enduring ordinari¬ 
ness of herself, of her own beloved father and 
mother. “There are moments when Alban is your 
father all over again. I loved him very dearly, 
Oswald, but I can’t help saying there were occasions 
when he tried me hard. He had the most incom¬ 
prehensible ideas—reasonless. One couldn’t argue 
with him. Sometimes he seemed to me to be not 
quite balanced on some points, he was so wilful. And 
Alban is like that. But I could manage your father.” 

Alban and his ideas were always a great trial. 
Even as a child, as a school-boy, his habit of going 
contrary to the sun was a source of trouble. He 
was forever thrusting his conceptions of what was 
right athwart what his fellows thought enjoyable. 

IJ 


SIMPLES 


ii 

An instance: 

There was a time at school when a bright intellect 
had organised a rag on Preacher’s Cottage. The 
bright intellect was probably Edwin’s. Even in those 
days his liveliness, superficial winningness, his quick¬ 
ness and jolliness drew boys to him, made him a sort 
of leader, and even then his waywardness had a 
touch of malice in it. 

Preacher was a Dissenter in the village near the 
school, and for that and no other reason unpopular. 
He was at that period building a cottage against the 
school hedge, and had the walls up as far as the first 
floor. The idea of “sliming” through the hedge 
and levelling those walls to the earth was considered 
so brilliant that only the presence and popularity of 
his two big brothers, Oswald and Edwin, saved Alban 
from attack when he said that the project was rotten 
and caddish. 

“Clout his silly young head,” cried half a dozen 
voices, and Edwin jeered at him in good humour, 
“Go and hide yourself somewhere, you idiotic early 
Christian, you aren’t popular with the lions.” 

Alban simply said: “I won’t, and if this is your 
idea, Edwin, it’s the idea of a skunk. It’s mean ...” 

“Suppress that child,” said someone, and Oswald 
for the good repute of the Kents caught Alban’s 
arm, and with a twist shot the figure, which seemed 
to be strung together by jangling wires, out of the 
crowd of boys. 


16 


SIMPLES 


“Get out of this before you get a good toeing,” 
said Oswald, as solemn then as always, “and keep 
out of sight until you’ve got over making an ass of 
yourself.” 

Alban picked himself up and came straight back 
to the group. 

“I don’t care what you do. It’s a caddish idea, 
and if you do it, I’ll go straight to the Head and 
split.” 

“The dirty little sneak,” shouted several. 

“It’s not sneaking, because I’m telling you now 
straight.” 

Edwin, always a fellow of quickness, jumped at 
Alban and clouted him hard over the left ear. Alban 
thereupon butted his brother with his head, so hard 
that Edwin rolled on the ground and had to be at¬ 
tended to by several warm pals. 

In the confusion Oswald, feeling that the honour 
of the family was at stake, again secured Alban’s 
spindly arm, and proceeded to hit him well and truly 
on the strained biceps. 

“Will you shut up now?” he demanded when he 
felt he had hit enough. 

“I won’t. You won’t make me, either. It is cad¬ 
dish and mean. Preacher’s done no harm to us. He’s 
spent money building that cottage and he’ll lose if 
we knock it down. I will split. I swear, I’ll split. 
It’s the only decent thing to do.” 

“The little worm,” said a big boy. “He will, too. 
What a slug, to spoil the best lark of the term.” 

17 


SIMPLES 


“That’s not a lark, it’s hooliganism,” said Alban. 

“You don’t know what a lark is, you young scug.” 

“Don’t I,” he challenged. “If you want a lark, 
who’ll come with me to the Head’s study and paint 
the nose of Marcus Aurelius red?” 

iii 

Queer kid, Alban. He threatened to and would 
have split if they attempted one lark, but carried out 
the other with tremendous aplomb. The bust of 
Marcus Aurelius had the most gorgeous red nose for 
weeks, and Alban got a month’s detention and six 
on each from the leather paddycock for his triumph. 

He need not have had that punishment, either. 
The school was backing him in spite of the thunder 
of the authorities. The school assured him, and he 
knew it as a fact, that no one would split. But he 
owned up himself. There was no reason why one 
hundred and fifty boys should be punished for the 
deed of one, he said. 

A strange nature with fixed, high-falutin’ ideas, 
his fellows thought, and quite willing to be a martyr 
to those ideas. It was hard to understand a queer 
fish of his sort. 

Edwin and his particular friends could not. 

Edwin even in his teens was a debonair and way¬ 
ward creature. He had an engaging and spontaneous 
manner and a light boldness that gave him charm 
and made him many friends. That his dar- 
18 


SIMPLES 


ing led him gaily to break rules even then did not 
make him less heroic in the eyes of those who cared 
for him. 

But Edwin certainly was not the fellow to suffer 
that the school might go free. 

He and certain of his friends were seen smoking 
by a short-sighted master, and they remained obdu¬ 
rately mum while the authorities threatened to blot 
out a full play-day unless the unspecified culprits 
owned up. 

Thanks to the unwritten laws of school nobody 
would sneak, though many knew and most suspected. 
Edwin made the most of the unwritten law and went 
about with a guileless air, refusing to “own up,” 
though others threw black glances at him. 

It was Alban who said point-blank, “If you don’t 
own up, you scug, I’ll do it for you.” 

“Good,” said Edwin. “You always had the 
means to go into the business of the sacrificial goat. 
You’ll get seven on each.” 

“I mean,” said Alban, deliberately, “I shall tell 
the Head you were one of the smokers.” 

“I think you’re asking for a punch in the mouth, 
young Alban,” said Edwin, dropping his humourous 
outlook. 

“I mean it. Are you going to own up?” 

“And I mean it, too, you howling young sneak. 
Blab a word and I twist your neck.” 

“The real sneak work is not owning up,” said 
Alban. “It’s not fair and it’s not straight.” 

19 


SIMPLES 


“Fair and straight be hanged. Mind your own 
business or I’ll punch your ruddy young head off.” 

“That’s what I’m doing. It is my business. You’re 
my brother, it’s us, the Kents, who’re behaving shab¬ 
bily to the school.” 

Edwin argued no longer. He punched Alban’s 
head, punched it well and often. Alban fought him 
like a cat. Knocked down, he was up at once, without 
resting, and fighting again. Alban never paid the 
slightest attention to heavier weight. He would 
have gone on until he was killed had not Oswald 
arrived to tear his brothers apart. 

“Now what about sneaking?” snarled Edwin 
through bloody lips. “You understand now what 
it’ll mean to you.” 

“I’m telling the Head after night prayers if you 
don’t do it before,” cried Alban in spite of his bat¬ 
tered face. 

“But I’ve licked you, you young fool.” 

“What difference does that make?” 

It made no difference. Not even when Oswald 
threw in his weight did it make a difference. Oswald 
with heavy stolidity tried to make the young ass see 
the accepted point of view. 

“Can’t you see you can’t tell? It’s your own 
brother, man.” 

“It’s you who can’t see,” insisted Alban. “It’s 
just because he is our brother I’ve got to do it. If 
it wasn’t my brother I couldn’t.” 

“You leave me gasping,” groaned Oswald. “You 
20 


SIMPLES 


really do. Nobody else in the school thinks of 
sneaking.” 

“That’s it. They won’t. They know who did the 
smoking but they won’t blab. That’s the decency of 
them. Edwin should be decent in turn, and, since 
he won’t, why it’s up to us, who’re sort of respon¬ 
sible for him, to prevent him doing this caddish thing 
against the school.” 

“I’ll punch your nose,” interrupted Edwin. 

“Shut up, Ed. Let the little rat spit it out,” said 
Oswald. 

“Don’t you see,” Alban pressed, “we’ve got to 
sort of save the Kent name. Don’t you see?” 

“I’m blowed if I do. Don’t you see you ought to 
stick by your brother?” 

“Not when he’s wrong, and against everybody 
else in the right.” 

“That’s tripe if you like. A brother’s a 
brother . . .” 

“It’s being right that counts. Nobody counts if 
you have to go straight, behave decently.” 

“Never heard such muck,” cried Oswald, gazing 
down upon his shambling colt of a junior with eyes 
really amazed. “Where do you get your ideas? Look 
here, Pm not splitting, and, by Jove, I’m his elder 
brother. I’m the one to do it if anyone.” 

“Of course you are,” said Alban, amazed that 
Oswald had only just seen it. 

“You damn little fool,” shouted Oswald, taken 
aback. “If you don’t dry up now and keep your 
mouth shut, I’ll kick you round the footer field.” 

21 


SIMPLES 


“Just as you like. But after prayers I go to the 
Head if Edwin doesn’t.” 

Edwin knew it was hopeless. He snarled: “If 
you’re so almighty pi, why not be a real saint and 
say you did it yourself? The honour of the family 
and the what-d’y call ’em of decency will be satis¬ 
fied then.” 

Alban stared at him amazed: “I can’t understand 
you chaps a bit. That’d be sheer lying.” 

“The chump’s the limit,” jeered Edwin. 

“He’s loony,” agreed Oswald. “It’s no good 
arguing, but look here, Alban, I’ll flay the skin off 
your behind if you split. Understand?” 

“It’ll depend on Edwin, then,” said Alban, with¬ 
out excitement. 

It didn’t really. Edwin had no intention of own¬ 
ing up if he could help it, and he held out until he 
saw Alban break from the line of boys going 
to the dormitories that night, and make for the Head¬ 
master’s door. He ran after Alban, hit him squarely 
on the ear, snarled savagely, “Get back to line. Of 
course I’m owning up.” 

He went down the passage, hesitated at the dread 
door, saw that Alban was waiting and calmly watch¬ 
ing, went in and owned up. 

It is a sidelight on Edwin’s charm that he became 
even more popular for owning up and saving the 
school, and that when he gave Alban another hiding 
for forcing him to perform this heroic deed, the 
school agreed that Alban deserved it for not playing 
quite squarely with such a jolly nice chap as Edwin. 

22 


SIMPLES 


iv 

A difficult customer, Alban, with his “straight 
thing to do” and his passion for decency. 

It was just as troublesome to the family when 
he left school. The family insisted that there was 
no knowing how Alban would take anything, or 
rather one always did know. He was always on 
the other side. 

“What’s that you said?” Edwin would mock in 
a mimicry of Alban’s voice. “I didn’t hear, but 
whatever it was, I’m agin’ it.” 

It was a legend. Alban was always “agin’ ” the 
family. 

Quite frequently he was. The Kents, as a clan, 
instinctively supported the family viewpoint against 
the world. They were inclined, too, to have a scorn¬ 
ful and low opinion of the world when it came in 
clash with the Kents. Coming from the superfine 
Cathedralism of Rood, the world, that is Earlhamp- 
ton, was to them a thing of unintelligence and con¬ 
tempt. With ideas fixed, unreasonable, and super¬ 
cilious, they were bound to clash with one who above 
all had a passion for honesty and fairness. 

Alban couldn’t see that the Pennyweights were 
criminals and monsters of depravity to be conspired 
against in Earlhampton, because Mr. Pennyweight 
had proved his right to a certain piece of factory 
land the Kents thought ought to be theirs. 

“But dammit, he’s right,” Alban cried, his eyes 
full of a sort of dreamy wonder at their lack of 
23 


SIMPLES 


equity. “The deeds have proved him right. The 
law has supported his right.” 

“His wife pretended to be my best friend,” Mrs. 
Kent said with the tragic accent of a betrayed soul. 
“And all the time her husband was working 
against us.” 

“But it is his land, always has been,” Alban 
pointed out. 

“He knew we thought it ours and wanted it,” said 
Mrs. Kent. “That should have been enough.” 

“But it’s his land,” protested Alban. “Dad made 
a muddle over it, it’s true, but it’s Pennyweight’s 
land. You can’t be angry with a man for holding 
on to what is his, can you?” 

“You don’t see our point of view,” said Mrs. Kent 
with dignity. “He knew your father thought that 
was his land, and that it is necessary to us. He was 
our friend, and yet he goes behind our back.” 

“That’s rot. He’s been quite aboveboard all the 
time. He met us fairly the moment he realised he 
had a claim. The friction has come from our side.” 

“My brother, how he loves us,” said Edwin. 

“Of course, we’re the ones in the wrong,” said 
Ethelfleda, her tone of the singular flat tartness that 
went with her flabby, pouchy face. 

“Didn’t the friction come from us?” demanded 
Alban. “Didn’t we make it a law-court business 
instead of settling it frankly? And didn’t we start 
cutting Mrs. Pennyweight and Alice and Ada?” 

“A woman Pve practically made, socially,” sniffed 
24 


SIMPLES 


Mrs. Kent. “She came here a little frump without 
even a cook-general . . .” 

“Oh, Lord, what has that got to do with the rights 
and wrongs of Pennyweight’s land?” 

“Oh, you won’t see it,” snapped Ethelfleda. “You 
like people to crow over us.” 

“They didn’t. They were quite friendly and were 
frightfully upset when you snubbed ’em.” 

“And serve them right, too,” said Mrs. Kent. “I 
certainly cannot receive a woman who has worked 
against me in the underhand way Ida Pennyweight 
and her husband . . .” 

“We’re round at the starting-point again,” sighed 
Alban. “Can’t you people get over your personal 
huffiness and see that the only thing that counts is 
the right or wrong of the matter? Pennyweight 
was right. I don’t suppose he felt any too good 
having to go for us over it, and since we knew the 
position from the first, I don’t think we were any 
too clean forcing it on him.” 

“Alban!” cried his mother, in a horrified tone. 
“Why is it you seem to take a real pleasure in making 
your own family out to be blackguards?” 

“Well, were we too clean? We knew all along 
we had no real right to that land, but we tried to 
jockey Pennyweight, went as far as lawyers would 
take us to try and shake an absolutely sound claim. 
Was that quite straight on our part? If anybody 
has a right to get hot it’s Pennyweight. But he isn’t, 
he’s really rather sporting about it.” 

“He knows it’s best to be in with us,” said Mrs. 
25 


SIMPLES 


Kent, grimly. “He knows that we can make things 
very difficult for him in Earlhampton. Very 
difficult.” 

“It’s not to our credit that we used that weapon 
and other things to try and swing him. I think we 
ought to be rather humble about the whole business.” 

“Of course, you’d expect us to grovel in the dirt,” 
from Ethelfleda. 

“And what would you have done to settle the 
business on the high moral level?” asked Edwin. 
Edwin knew exactly how to spur Alban on to the 
torment of his family. It was not pure malice. He 
loved to get fun out of anything. Giggles from 
Camillus and Ethelfleda and even Dunstan showed 
how well they recognised that their jolly brother 
was pulling Alban’s leg. 

“Me?” said Alban, as though the question were 
ridiculous. “Directly I saw that the land was Penny¬ 
weight’s I should have handed it back to him without 
a fight.” 

“And if, as we hoped when we fought, he had 
not been able to substantiate that claim?” asked 
Oswald, pontifically. “Remember, we did think our 
father bought that land. There was a doubt about 
Pennyweight producing proofs, you know.” 

“The point is, we knew. Directly we went into 
the matter we saw a mistake had been made, and 
that it was Pennyweight’s land. We shouldn’t have 
asked him to produce proofs. We should have 
handed back what was his at once. I should have, 
otherwise I’d have felt a thief.” 

26 


SIMPLES 


“A thief!” cried Mrs. Kent. “Are you accusing 
us of being thieves?” 

“Yes,” said Alban, “I suppose it amounts to that.” 

“You’re ridiculous,” snapped Oswald. “It was 
a matter of business, and in modern business ...” 

“I’m afraid,” said Alban, tersely, “I’m not really 
what you’d call a good specimen of the modern busi¬ 
ness man.” 

“I fear you are not,” said Oswald, grimly, and 
he and Mrs. Kent exchanged understanding 
glances. 


v 

There was reason for those glances. Alban had 
at that time just taken up a position in the Kent Drug 
Company. Presently, when he had got a grip on 
the business and had finished a course of special 
chemistry at the Earlhampton University, he would 
become a partner with a definite say in the control. 
And with these wild ideas in his head! 

“He’s like his father,” Mrs. Kent cried once more. 
“I never could get his father to see things sensibly. 
Never! I remember one terrible occasion, Oswald, 
when, dear good man though he was, he did im¬ 
mense harm to the business by refusing to deal with 
a man on the grounds that he sweated his workpeople. 
He cut himself off from a most profitable Liver and 
Headache Pill line that way in spite of all I 
could do.” 

“That’s queer,” said Oswald, staring with his 
27 


SIMPLES 


faded, blue calico-print eyes. “Alban’s been up to 
the same thing. He wants me to stop buying from 
Samsen for much the same reason. Samsen does our 
card-boxes, cartons, and so forth. Alban swears the 
man pays starvation wages, and that his girl hands 
can’t earn enough to live on decently under his 
system.” 

“Oh, Oswald, almost his father’s own words. You 
—you didn’t listen to him?” 

“Of course I didn’t, Mother. It would mean 
nearly a farthing an article oflF profits on all our 
boxed lines. I told him not to talk rubbish and to 
study business. I pointed out that if we chucked 
Samsen, Farewells would be underselling us. They 
have no moral qualms about Samsen.” 

“Did he see reason?” 

“Does he ever? He told me to leave Farewells 
to look after their own conscience. What mattered 
to us was ours. I told him that though sentiment 
might be a pretty thing, it would cost us the best 
part of fifteen hundred pounds.” 

“Yes?” 

“You’ll know what the young fool answered. He 
said that cash was less important than decent be¬ 
haviour, and that in any case we had more than 
enough to keep us all in comfort.” 

“Oswald!” cried the outraged Mrs. Kent. 

“Don’t worry, Mother. Such talk will have no 
effect while Pm head of the business. And he’ll get 
over it. He’s probably taking in a lot of Socialistic 
28 



SIMPLES 


stuff at the University. Most cubs go through that 
phase at his age.” 

“I wish he’d seen less of those Conroys,” wailed 
Mrs. Kent. Alban had just become intimate with 
Gilda’s family, though he had not yet introduced 
Edwin. “I’m sure they do him no good. A boy 
like Alban wants good influences ... It was only 
after years of marriage that I could get his father to 
shed his extravagant ideas. I’m very fearful, Oswald. 
He could do immense harm if he were in power 
at the Works.” 

She and her eldest son exchanged a look that was 
measuring as well as anxious. There was even more 
than a touch of calculation in Oswald’s eyes. He 
liked power himself and at the present moment he 
enjoyed it without restriction. Edwin was already a 
partner, of course, but Edwin was much more ad¬ 
dicted to amusements and gaiety, to making the 
most of the friendship his peculiar quality of attrac¬ 
tion drew to him, than to active interest and labour 
in Kent Drugs. Alban was and would be quite 
another proposition. With his keenness, cleverness, 
and real ability and his strange ideas, he would be 
a tough customer to tackle once he had a say in the 
running of the firm. 

“It is a matter of anxiety,” agreed Oswald, drop¬ 
ping his pale eyes. “But we need not worry over it 
yet. There is no hurry. The will gives you a free 
hand, Mother.” 

The will certainly gave Mrs. Kent a free hand. 
That was the reason why Alban at twenty-three 
29 


SIMPLES 


was not a partner, though Edwin had been made one 
at twenty-one. Alban held a sort of indeterminate 
managership with special duties in the laboratory, 
but Mrs. Kent saw to it that he had no hold whatso¬ 
ever until she had made up her mind about his 
character. 

vi 

The whole family agreed with Mrs. Kent that 
Alban was dangerous, that his attitude was always 
against the family interests. 

It wasn’t true. Alban could be just as “difficult” 
to the enemies of the family if the occasion arose. In 
fact he was inclined to support the right for their 
sakes even more resolutely than themselves. 

He fought, for example, for Rosamund when she 
wanted to take up art, though perhaps that couldn’t 
be counted as a virtue, since the rest of the family 
was tepidly against Rosamund. He did fight, any¬ 
how, against the conservative negation and hostility 
of Mrs. Kent and Oswald and the antagonistic atti¬ 
tude of the rest. And he forced them all to see that 
they were wrong, and that Rosamund had every 
right to be what she desired. “It’s what she wants,” 
he said. “You may not agree, but you aren’t living 
her life for her, are you? And since you aren’t, you 
can’t interfere with her ambitions.” 

He even defeated Aunt Heppie, who had turned 
her big, social guns against a girl determined to do 
what no “ladylike” girl should want to do. Out- 
30 


SIMPLES 


pointed in her arguments, the old termagant had 
tried to crush Alban with sarcasm. 

“You’re pretty high-and-mighty about this, young 
man. Are you the one to pay for these low, new¬ 
fangled ways?” 

‘Of course, Pm not.” 

“I thought not. Easy to give orders when you 
don’t have to pay the piper.” 

“Nobody has to pay the piper,” said Alban. “My 
father’s will has provided for all that.” 

“What?” cried Mrs. Kent, aghast. 

“What do you know about the will?” demanded 
an uneasy Oswald, particularising his mother’s con¬ 
sternation. It was the aim of Mrs. Kent and her 
eldest son to keep the contents of the will mysterious, 
mystical, and sacred to the younger children. 

“I know that” said Alban, calmly. “The will says 
that if any child, irrespective of sex, wishes to branch 
out in a calling outside of Kent Drugs, such part of 
his or her interest in Kent Drugs is to be utilised to 
provide for that child’s following that calling. The 
thing’s plain, and I’ve talked it over with Rosamund. 
She is willing to forego her interest in Kent Drugs, 
as the will ordains, in order to take up art. You 
can’t stand against her.” 

“Your father intended me to use my discretion,” 
said his mother, appalled by Alban’s familiarity with 
the will. 

“The will doesn’t say that.” 

“But, of course, your father means it. I’m your 
mother.” 


31 


SIMPLES 


“I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” said Alban, 
imperturbably. “If Father meant you to have a say, 
he would have made a point of it. He was quite 
specific on other matters—about the partnerships, 
for instance.” 

Mrs. Kent looked alarmed and Oswald looked 
sheepish. They had adopted the attitude up to this 
that Alban, in some vague way, had failed to notice 
that he had not been made a partner at twenty-one. 
His mere mention of the matter, his uncanny knowl¬ 
edge of the will, killed the opposition to Rosamund. 
She got her art schooling. It was given to her lav¬ 
ishly, the whole family combining as though they 
alone had fought for her. Alban’s part in the mat¬ 
ter was overlooked, and Oswald and his mother hoped 
that the concession would help Alban also to over¬ 
look the fact that not only wasn’t he a partner, but 
that no steps were being taken to make him one. 

vii 

Alban’s “difficulties” had been of benefit to the 
family even more decisively in other ways. He had 
even been the champion of Edwin. 

Edwin at one period had found employment for 
his genial and gregarious qualities in some sort of 
social welfare work in Earlhampton. It was work 
that suited his lively, hail-fellow-well-met nature. 
He did it admirably. He had charm, he had such 
a quick good humour, he had such a fascination for 
many people that he soon strengthened his organisa- 
32 


SIMPLES 


tion. His good work as committee-man and secre¬ 
tary made it certain that he would be elected acting 
president for the year in question. 

It was then, however, that a “Big Bug” in Earl- 
hampton civic life took a hand. This Importance 
had learnt privately from City Council sources that 
a minor royalty was to visit the city, and one of the 
items on her programme would be an inspection of 
one of the welfare work hostels. The Big Man did 
not care in the slightest about the welfare work, 
but he did care about pushing himself and his fam¬ 
ily forward. And as his son was on Edwin’s com¬ 
mittee, he felt that it would be a fine thing if his 
son were the one to receive and show royalty round 
the hostel and be much photographed and para¬ 
graphed in consequence. 

With this ambition in view he began to pull wires 
to have his son elected acting president instead of 
Edwin, and, being an old campaigner and a power 
in the land, there is no doubt he would have gained 
the day if Alban had not intervened. 

Edwin did not put up much of a fight. The 
Kents did not fight at all. They were furious, they 
deplored the meanness of the thing, it was a crying 
shame . . . but they could do nothing, they could 
not really be parties to a public squabble. 

Alban argued that mere seeing that a thing was 
wrong wasn’t enough. One should be active in 
virtue. He was. He went straight to the Big Bug 
and gave him a candid view of the injustice of his 
plan. He went even as far as threatening an exposure 

33 


SIMPLES 


in the press. The family trembled at the fierceness 
of his ardour and the threat of scandal it promised. 
But he stuck to his guns and won. 

The Big Bug climbed down, and his son was 
not elected acting president. Whether Alban had 
awakened his sense of justice, or whether threatened 
publicity so close to Council elections had scared 
him, matters little. He surrendered. 

Though Edwin had triumphed and the family 
preened>itself, their opinion of Alban did not change. 
He was still the difficult one. 

It was even so after he had championed Camillus. 

Camillus had a pretty taste in the uses of adver¬ 
tisement, and was training himself to take over the 
publicity side of the Kent Drug Company. In the 
process of this training he was the victim of an un¬ 
scrupulous School of Advertising. 

This school, teaching with marvellous inefficiency 
through the medium of the post, had with greater 
talent than its methods of tuition indicated, entered 
a set of designs made by Camillus in the course of his 
studies for a prize given by a great trading firm. 
The designs won the prize, but the school remained 
modestly mum on the matter. It was only when the 
advertisements appeared in the press that Camillus 
and the family recognised that they had been robbed 
of some few hundred pounds of good cash, to say 
no more. 

The family was hugely indignant again, and 
Camillus himself inclined to rush up to town to 
read the riot act to the school. It was Oswald and 

34 


SIMPLES 


Mrs. Kent who shuddered away from the crude 
brutality of insisting upon their rights, in public 
maybe. Camillus was counselled to go slow, and 
Camillus, who had an unfaltering instinct for march¬ 
ing with the herd, was inclined to fall into line. 

But not Alban. 

Alban at once insisted that the proprietors of the 
school were thieves and should be dealt with as 
thieves. An insolent, plausible letter from them 
promising the full shame of the open courts of law 
simply stiffened him, though it made Mrs. Kent and 
Oswald more inclined than ever to drop the matter. 

“It only means trouble. There is nothing to be 
gained by stirring up muddy waters,” they cried. 

“They know that attitude, they’re banking on it,” 
said Alban. “The very tone of the letter tells you 
that they are trying to scare us that way. But we’ve 
got to face it. It’s a duty.” 

“Duty! Don’t be silly. If we like to let this matter 
drop it’s nobody’s concern but ourselves,” said Mrs. 
Kent. 

“But it isn’t. This is a public matter. It’s because 
people like us shirk their duty that thieves can carry 
on with immunity. It’s our job as citizens to act.” 

“Oh, Lord, he’s off again,” grinned Edwin. 
“Public weal and private discomfort. . . . Duty! 
Fat lot the world cares about our doing our duty.” 

“That doesn’t matter. The thing is we ought to 
care. We’re members of the community, and it’s 
up to all of us to keep the community safe and 
clean.” 


35 


SIMPLES 


“You’re a sort of morbid moral dustman,” sneered 
Edwin. 

“We all ought to be that,” smiled Alban. He 
quite appreciated Edwin’s humour, even if he 
couldn’t get the chap to see his point of view. “Look 
at the matter this way. Unless we teach these 
scoundrels that their tricks are risky, we’re leaving 
them free to rob the next man who comes along. 
You see what I mean, we’re morally responsible for 
the robbery in that way. And their next victim may 
be a poor student who can’t afford to lose the money 
or stand up for his rights as we can. By scotching 
the brutes now, we’re doing not only our public duty, 
but making the world a little safer for our fellows.” 

“Why should we help people we don’t know? 
Why should we put ourselves to this trouble for 
others?” asked Mrs. Kent, loftily. 

Alban stared at her: “I say,” he said with wide 
eyes, “aren’t you a Christian? Don’t you realise 
what is the very basis of Christian teaching?” 

“How dare you,” cried his mother, in a tone thick 
with horror. “You are being blasphemous as well 
as coarse—and unfilial.” 

“Well, then,” continued Alban, as though think¬ 
ing it out as he spoke, “since we’re only officially 
Christians, look at it from a practical point of view. 
Can’t you see that if everyone thought only of his 
own advantage in the world, it would soon become 
entirely unfit to live in?” 

“It’s going that way fast, anyhow,” grinned 
Edwin. 


36 


SIMPLES 


“It is, because more and more people think of 
themselves rather than the common weal. And that’s 
why it’s up to us, everyone of us, to do what we can 
to stop the rot.” 

“Oh, shut up,” cried Edwin. “We’ve heard it 
all before. Keep to the point. It doesn’t please 
us to go wallowing in publicity for the sake of a fad. 
And we won’t.” 

“I will,” said Alban. 

And he did. He did it with rather astonishing 
ease. He bearded the two principals of the school 
in their dirty back office and put the fear of law and 
jail into their hearts. A letter admitting that a 
slight error had been made came from the school, 
and a cheque for the several hundred pounds, less 
commission, which Camillus had won. 

Curiously enough, that deepened, rather than not, 
the family’s conviction that Alban was a crank and a 
danger to the family. 


viii 

Perhaps there was an element of right in this atti¬ 
tude. Your apostles of pure duty and rightness are 
explosive individuals in a world where such virtues 
are theoretical rather than practical. 

“A young Bayard,” as old Conroy, Gilda’s father, 
called Alban, “in his zeal sometimes exposes things 
best left covered.” 

With Edwin a member of the Kent family some¬ 
thing like that was bound to happen. Indeed it 

37 


SIMPLES 


was actually while championing Edwin that Alban 
discovered the true nature of his elder brother. 

It was in his early days at the Factory. He was 
still giving part of his time to studying chemistry 
under old Conroy at the University. He had 
already paid several visits to Moap’s Farm, too, and 
had become what Oswald called “an infernal nui¬ 
sance” by his interest in the drug properties of herbs. 

A factor that gave peculiar violence to the revela¬ 
tion was that Alban had only lately introduced 
Edwin to Gilda Conroy and the freedom of the 
Conroy’s beautiful Georgian house. 

Alban picked up the rumour of Edwin and a 
woman at the University. It was probably flung 
at him as a ribald joke. He was furious at it, 
even as a joke. Not merely because it was un¬ 
clean and about his own brother, but because, like 
many people, he was inclined to play hero-worshipper 
to the vivid, jolly, dashing Edwin. Angry, he said 
to Oswald across his desk at the Factory the day 
after he had heard the slander: 

“Look here, Oswald, in case it gets to your ears, 
I heard a foul libel about Edwin yesterday. It’s 
apparently about a good deal. I gave it the lie, 
of course, and pass the hint, so that you’ll be ready 
to do the same.” 

Oswald looked stolidly at his desk for half a 
minute, his woolly mind wondering whether he 
ought to leave this alone, or whether it would be 
wiser to head off Alban. 

“What was it you heard?” 

38 


SIMPLES 


“It was quite disgusting. It coupled Edwin with 
a woman, the daughter of a pub-keeper in Seneschal 
Street. Gertie Woodrun is the name. It’s the worst 
kind of slander. They say, he’s supposed to—to 
have gone the whole hog. I’m going to get to the 
bottom of it and make the cad who started it sit up.” 

“Oh, I say, don’t do that. I mean—I really 
wouldn’t,” cried Oswald, in fright. 

“But, my dear chap, 1 can’t sit down under a vile 
story like that about my brother.” 

“I know. But no good ever came of stirring up 
mud. It only makes matters worse.” 

“Good God, that seems to suggest that Edwin 

v 

“Don’t be a fool,” snapped Oswald. “I’m not 
suggesting anything. I’m merely saying that you 
know what these stories are, and how dangerous it 
is to make any sort of outcry about them. You see 
Edwin is rackctty . . . .” 

“Racketty, yes, I supnosc he is a bit. But, hang 
it all, that’s no reason ror accusing him of carrying 
on with a barmaid.” 

“1 know-— I know,” cried Oswald, irritably. “Why 
do you jump so at things, Alban? What I mean is 
that many people know he is wild, and are ready to 
believe anything. If you stir things up, the idea 
will spread, and you can never catch up with it. Let 
this thing alone. Don’t make it public property.” 

“I don’t quite see how I can stand by and hear 
my own brother befouled,” said Alban. “One must 
smash a lie.” 


39 


SIMPLES 


“You must stop him,” cried Mrs. Kent, when 
Oswald told her of this conversation. “Oh, what 
a terrible trouble that boy is.” 

“How can I?” asked Oswald, sullenly, feeling 
that he had all the burdens of the world on his 
shoulders. “How can I prevent him hearing the 
truth? Edwin’s done that for us, the little low 
hound.” 

“It wasn’t his fault,” said Mrs. Kent, indignantly. 
“That creature hunted him, I’m certain. No son of 
mine would do a thing like that.” 

“Oh, well,” muttered the disillusioned Oswald, 
for the habits of Edwin were not new to him. “That 
doesn’t matter now. The girl’s in trouble, and her 
father is making himself most unpleasant about it.” 

“He would,” said Mrs. Kent, viciously. “He’d 
do anything to catch a Kent. That was what she 
was aiming at, the creature.” 

“We’re talking about Alban and the impossibility 
of hiding this from him. With all the talk about 
and with old Woodrun coming round to the office 
and creating disturbances, he’s bound to hear. And 
before that he’ll have raised the devil himself, 
defending Edwin. How can I stop him?” 

“You simply must, Oswald. He’ll make a real 
scandal of it just when we are managing to keep 
it dark. And what will he do to Edwin when he 
hears? With his strange ideas—he’ll kill Edwin. 
And then there’ll be another scandal. Oh, what have 
I done to have such a son!” 

40 


SIMPLES 


“None of that explains how you think I am going 
to stop him,” said Oswald, doggedly. 

“I know, but we must stop him. Must.” 

“The only thing I can think of is to send him to 
this Moap’s Farm he’s so fond of. I mean, to work 
there.” 

“The Herb Farm? But you don’t want that, do 
you, Oswald? You say yourself he’s wasting too 
much attention on that already, and getting cranky 
ideas about herbs as medicines. Sending him there 
will be encouraging him.” 

“I can’t think of anything else. I know he’s 
getting cranky on herbs, but on the other hand if we 
bundle him off there for a month or so, while I 
deal with Woodrun, he’ll be out of harm’s way until 
the affair has blown over. A month oughtn’t to 
hurt him. In fact it might cure him, for Moap isn’t 
doing at all well, and Alban is business man enough 
to be impressed by failure.” 

“Ye-es, it would be a way out, Oswald, if he 
doesn’t suspect. You’ve been against his visits to 
the Farm.” 

“He won’t suspect. Why should he? And then, 
as it happens, he’s just going into the herbal drugs— 
belladonna, henbane, horehound, and the rest. I’ll 
make that an excuse for giving him his chance of 
studying the drugs from the beginning. That’ll 
satisfy him. Alban likes to master the whole pro¬ 
cess from the ground up. I’ll write to Moap at 
once.” 

Oswald wrote and when he received a letter from 

4i 


SIMPLES 


the owner of the herb garden in the west two days 
later he congratulated himself on having brilliantly 
negotiated the difficulty with Alban. 

But he had not. Before he could call his younger 
brother into his office, Alban walked in himself. One 
glance at the lean, pointed face, now pale and almost 
sick with horror and disgust, told Oswald that the 
worst had happened. 

For once Oswald rose to a condition of mind 
emphatic, reasonably clear-headed, and direct. The 
combination of worries and evil circumstances had 
vanquished his habitual woolliness. He said at 
once: 

“Oh, I was just sending for you, Alban. I wanted 
to have a chat about those drugs you are handling. 
It seems—” 

“Oswald,” began Alban, in a thick voice, but his 
brother went on ruthlessly: 

“It seems to me that the best way for you to master 
all the processes is to see the plant from the growing 
onward. Pve been in touch with Moap. He tells 
me he is just putting in his belladonna, and so on. 
That’s a good thing. If you go at once you’ll see 
the drug from the planting. So I’ve arranged with 
Moap, and he’s willing to take you in. You’ll like 
that, I know, for it’s experience you’ve always 
wanted . . 

“Oh, yes . . . I’ve always wanted it. . . . 
Only, I say, Oswald, that story about Edwin . . 

“Well, that’s settled,” said Oswald, briskly. 
“Moap is holding his planting until you arrive, so 
42 


SIMPLES 


you must lose no time. I’ve spoken to your 
mother . . 

“Oswald?” 

“She has everything ready for you. Catch the 
afternoon train. You’ll be in the fields at Mar- 
garetting at dawn. That will . . . . ” 

“Damn you, shut up!” shouted Alban, crashing 
his fist on the desk and glaring with sick eyes at 
the dumbfounded Oswald. They glared for a 
moment. Then, without taking his eyes from his 
brother, Alban pulled a chair forward and sat in it. 

“You’ve got to understand, I mean to talk to you 
about Edwin,” he said. 

“Go on,” said Oswald, curtly. 

“I’ve found out about Edwin and the Woodrun 
girl. It’s true.” 

“It is,” said Oswald. 

“You knew all the time?” 

“For weeks.” 

“And you kept it from me?” 

“Don’t you think it is the sort of thing I would 
keep from you?” 

“I see ... it was too filthy?” That wasn’t 
the whole reason, but Oswald let it pass. “And it’s 
a definite fact that Edwin and this girl have— 
did—?” 

“It’s true.” 

“And the father is raising hell?” 

“Yes.” 

“My God,” groaned Alban. “The cad, the 
filthy cad.” 


43 


SIMPLES 


“He is,” snapped Oswald. “But I know how 
to deal with him.” 

“Who?” cried Alban, lifting a white face and 
wide eyes. “Edwin?” 

“I was talking of the father.” 

“I was talking of Edwin.” 

“You would,” said Oswald, curtly. 

“Can you defend him?” cried Alban with so fierce 
a passion that Oswald shrank back. “She isn’t the 
first, you know.” 

“I know,” said Oswald. 

“There was a sweet-shop girl, Emily some¬ 
thing—” 

“All right, I know.” 

“And there are other, casual women. And there’s 
this widow, Mrs. Hogarth.” 

“You needn’t go through the catalogue,” snapped 
Oswald. “I know it.” 

“It’s awful. Awful—the utter beast! The swine. 
To think that my brother . . .” 

“Don’t forget he is your brother,” said Oswald. 

“That makes it worse,” moaned Alban. “Much 
worse.” 

Oswald with his unexpected new power took com¬ 
mand of the situation. 

“I’m sorry you got to know of these things, 
Alban,” he said. “I—your mother and I (yes, she 
knows) tried to keep them away from you. Sending 
you to Moap’s Farm is part of our plan for keeping 
you out of this. You must go there . . 

U 


SIMPLES 


“Why should I be out of it?” blazed Alban. 
“Why should I shirk?” 

“What should you do?” snarled Oswald. “Where 
do you think you come in?” 

“Why—why,” said Alban, “why, to back you up, 
to force that beast to marry ...” He saw the 
look in Oswald’s eyes. “My God, you aren’t going 
to make him marry her?” 

“A girl of that class? Don’t be a fool.” 

“Her social status was high enough for seduction,” 
cried Alban. 

“Don’t be filthy. And don’t rant. There isn’t a 
question of marriage. No—no, cut out all that high¬ 
falutin’ talk about the wronged girl. It doesn’t come 
in. Apart from anything else the girl won’t marry 
him.” 

“Won’t? You mean she’s been persuaded by you 
and . . .” 

“I mean she won’t of her own accord. Her father 
would like to make that a point, but she won’t do 
it. She seems to hate Edwin, actually to be afraid 
of him. . . .” 

That was like a dash of water in Alban’s face. 
That a girl who had known and loved Edwin should 
hate him, was too startling. That his brother had 
proved himself vile, he admitted,, but that that 
genial, captivating, vivid fellow should engender 
hate and fear, seemed illogical. 

“I can’t believe that,” he said stiffly. “She’s been 
got at.” 

“Believe it or not, the girl makes no mistakes about 

r 4 5 


SIMPLES 


her feelings for Edwin. She says he’s cold-blooded 
and cruel. C A fiend’ is one of her expressions. Strong, 
of course, but it’s real fear of him that makes her 
refuse marriage—even if she had the chance.” 

“Her mind is warped by her tragedy,” said Alban. 
“That’s not Edwin’s character at all. If I saw her, 
I could persuade . . .” 

“We’ll have none of that,” Oswald thundered. 
“This is my business, understand, mine and your 
mother’s alone. We’ll have no interference. It’s 
difficult enough as it is, without extra trouble. I’m 
dealing with this as I dealt with the others.” 

“You had to handle the others?” 

“It’s the eldest brother’s privilege,” said Oswald, 
bitterly. “I’ll do now as I did before—satisfy the 
girl and her father and keep things quiet. I do it 
alone, understand. We’ve got to prevent this scan¬ 
dal spreading.” 

“But everybody knows about it. I ought to stay 
and face . . 

“Very few people—know. A certain few make 
jokes about it because they have heard rumours, but 
very few actually know. You don’t think Woodrun 
wants the story of his daughter’s trouble all over 
the town, do you?” 

“No,” breathed Alban, “no. Poor girl.” 

“She may be that or not,” said Oswald, tartly. 
“She has to be protected, anyhow, and I’m doing 
my best. You’ll only make matters worse by butting 
in. Perhaps you’ve made ’em worse already. I think 
46 


SIMPLES 


you’d better go home now and pack up for Moap’s 
Farm.” 

“Yes, Pd better,” said Alban, getting up in a 
dazed fashion. “You’re right. Pd better be out 
of this. ... I couldn’t be in the same house 
with Edwin, anyhow, I—I want to tear his damned 
throat out, the brute, the filthy-minded brute. To 
think . . . .” 

“That’ll do. Pve dealt with Edwin. You’ve 
got to remember, anyhow, that Edwin is built on 
different lines from you.” 

“You can’t excuse a man like that.” 

“You’ll probably find you can, as you grow wiser,” 
said Oswald. “But I’m not excusing him. He’s 
done a blackguard thing, and he always was unre¬ 
liable and racketty . . . But we won’t discuss 

him.” 

“I feel sick,” cried Alban. “To think that he’s 
mixed with decent people! Why, Pve even intro¬ 
duced him to the Conroys. To think of him being 
friendly with Old Conroy and Gilda . . .” 

“Nothing to be gained by going through this over 
and over again. Better get along to your packing, 
Alban. And don’t take it so tragically. It’s beastly, 
I’ll admit, but—well, it’s happened before to quite 
a number of young men, men the world thinks no 
worse of now.” 

“The world’s rotten, then,” cried Alban. “Rotten.” 

47 


Qhapter III 


i 

A LL this happened fourteen months before Aunt 
Heppie’s venomous tongue had started the 
tragedy afresh. 

For two months following his interview with 
Oswald, Alban had worked on Moap’s Farm, 
worked on the Bottom facing the view of beauty 
along the sea edge, worked in the soft airs among 
the herbs he loved, the old simples with song-like 
names that were beginning to grow into a peculiar 
passion of his. 

His interest in “botanical” pharmacy waxed, rather 
than waned as Oswald had hoped. He even came 
in a measure to share old Moap’s distinctly uncom¬ 
mercial obsession for the strange, old, half-forgotten 
herbs that had formed the everyday routine of the 
old wives 5 healing. 

Old Moap, with the lean, high-featured face of a 
beardless patriarch, with his seven hundred years of 
yeoman lore behind him, and his curious, fine, and 
serene culture, was a type to inspire enthusiasms. 
And he was not without his dry humour. 

“Buyers from the big houses have their jokes , 55 
he would smile in his slow way. “They ask for the 
brains of a horned toad killed at the new moon, or 
48 


SIMPLES 


the hairs from a black dog’s tail, or dried lizards, 
and the rest of the old witch-woman’s mumbo- 
jumbo, and those are fool things of course, Mr. 
Alban. But it seems to me that God or, if you 
like, Nature—I prefer God—didn’t put certain 
things into this world for nothing. The old folk, 
who saw that the animals got cured of illnesses by 
eating weeds, weren’t far wrong in choosing those 
weeds to cure humans. It seems to me natural to 
go to Nature for our cures.” 

Or again: 

“Why differentiate? The Pharmacopoeia admits 
that Belladonna, and White Horehound, Coltsfoot, 
and Dill are first-class natural remedies. Why not 
Marigold tea for measles, Sengreen for weak eyes, 
and Sage for sore throats? ... The old wives 
proved ’em.” 

Under the calm and beauty of the Farm and in 
the preoccupation of working in the “weed” garden 
and the potting and drying sheds, Alban was 
soothed. He began even to see Edwin’s behaviour 
more as a folly than as a tragedy. 

The life suited him, absorbed him even more than 
the work at the Factory. In fact it was his ardent 
praise of herbs, to the detraction of the mineral 
derivatives and synthetics that made the bulk of the 
Kent Drug Company’s output, that frightened the 
conservative Oswald into recalling him. 

Oswald had visions of an iconoclastic Alban 
sweeping out of doors all the cachets, pills, capsules, 
powders, tabloids, fluids, and crystals that brought 

49 


SIMPLES 


in so solid an income, and filling the factory with 
the despised Woundworts and weeds, the flowers, 
herbs, fungus, bulbs, roots, hips, barks, seeds, resins, 
berries, stems, and corms of his old wives’ pharmacy. 

That would be just the thing a madman like Alban 
would do if he got control, Oswald argued. It 
wasn’t, for Alban was a business man and no fool, 
but the thought became almost a mania with Oswald, 
and the reason why Alban’s chance of partnership 
became more and more remote. 

To set off this dangerous inclination towards 
herbs was Alban’s calmer attitude towards Edwin. 
Mrs. Kent’s tactful letters had completed the work 
the beauty and serenity of Moap’s Farm had begun. 
They had made it plain that Edwin had turned over 
a new leaf, that he had learnt his lesson and become 
a better man. The “affair” was finished, and what¬ 
ever scandal had been attached to it had blown over. 
Alban was given to understand that any reopening 
of the matter on his part would be more than likely 
to wreck his brother’s chance of rehabilitation and 
repentance. And of course that made a powerful 
appeal. Alban was the last man to spoil anyone’s 
chance of going straight. 

Indeed the news was a blessed relief to him. He 
might hate his brother’s beastliness, but it wasn’t in 
him to hate anyone, let alone Edwin, whose bright¬ 
ness, gaiety, and charm of irresponsibility gave so 
much vivacity to the family life. 

That vivacity, it is true, was showing more and 
more a touch of malice. Edwin was developing a 
50 


SIMPLES 


tendency to “get at” Alban, to make him the butt 
of the table. There was a sort of secret antagonism 
in this, arising no doubt from a clash of characters. 
It was because of this “baiting” on Edwin’s part 
that Oswald sent him to travel in the North for the 
firm about the time of Alban’s return. 

In Edwin and Alban Oswald and his mother 
realised they had two elements that must come 
together in an explosion one day. 

ii 

There was no explosion. The family life went 
on smoothly up to and beyond Edwin’s engagement 
to Gilda Conroy. 

Alban had been startled and bewildered by that. 
Not because he now doubted the straightness 
of his brother, for beyond Edwin’s usual casualness 
in business and his private inconsequence there 
hadn’t been a hint of anything wrong. The shock 
came from the fact that Gilda had been able to love 
such a man as Edwin. 

His first impression of Gilda Conroy remained 
the abiding impression. 

Conroy, attracted by the dreamer in Alban and 
finding him less of a “damn machine-minded ma¬ 
terialist” than the other youths to whom he taught 
“the constantly conflicting exact science of chemistry,” 
had invited him to his home. 

Old Conroy’s home was startling if you only knew 
him as the brilliant demonstrator of science at the 
51 


SIMPLES 


University, but it was absolutely like the Conroy who 
showed himself to his intimates. 

Conroy’s home air was as dreamy and as mystical 
as a fairy play of Maeterlinck. It had a dim, soft, 
fantastic atmosphere, vaguely, tenuously suggesting 
a beauty opalescently misty and conspicuously unreal. 
An astonishing home for a man whose business in 
life was the clear-cut facts of the laboratory. 

But perhaps not. Perhaps it was a swing-back 
from hard facts. Certainly in his home Old Conroy 
declared his abhorrence of hard facts, his contempt 
for exact science. 

“Anything that breeds a race of hard-faced, cock¬ 
sure, bronze-minded young men and the novels of 
Mr. Wells must be fundamentally wrong,” he 
declared. “This heresy of exact science—all wrong. 
It’s making us machines, not human beings.” 

He had no use for science, this brilliant scientist. 

“I know too much about it. The new religion of 
our enlightened age, they want to call it, the pure, 
unbiased cult of decisive truth that soars in its bal¬ 
anced calm above the squabbling creeds of quarrelling 
theologians. . . . Well, just you listen while I 
read how this Archbishop of Physics proves a brother 
Cardinal of the cult a liar, heretic, and worse.” 

He would read out with immense gusto some 
vehement controversy of scientists on a matter in 
which each was assured that his own verdict was the 
final one. 

“Calmness, balance, the triumph of truth,” he 
would jeer. “That sounds like it, doesn’t it? Tor- 
52 


SIMPLES 


quemada or Luther couldn’t have been stronger or 
more certain of infallibility. And it’s the same 
through all your exact sciences. All of them spend 
their lives laying down final dogmas which the next 
man proves utterly wrong.” 

For him the only exact science was the lovely 
inexactness of life. He put humanity in all its 
delicious contradictions and the inexplicable mys¬ 
ticism of beauty before everything. His house in 
quaint Guard God Street, where the ancient walls 
of Earlhampton marched down to the modern port, 
was filled with a dim air of tempered and ecstatic 
beauty. 

Loveliness in pictures, prints, statuettes, mellow 
furniture, foods even, gave it an air that somehow 
took the mind back to the Renaissance, and the men 
and women gathered there also in a queer way sug¬ 
gested the wraiths of long-dead hunters of beauty. 

Rather a tenuous and desiccated crew, these 
intimates of the Conroys, dwelling on lovely things 
with language so carefully chosen, so austerely 
thought and phrased that listening to them one heard 
the English tongue as a dead language, beautiful 
but bloodless. 

To Alban Conroy’s only child, Gilda, was the very 
soul of the house and these gatherings. Her slim, 
resilient figure with its casque of gilt hair, the pure 
serenity of her good looks, the sense of fragility 
about her—in spite of her clean, hard health and 
springy strength—her quietness, her candour, her 
fastidiousness, her sympathy, the breadth and rich- 

53 


SIMPLES 


ness of her reading, her trained and instinctive love 
of all that was beautiful, made her the natural spirit 
of her home. A vital spirit, yes, more real and 
robust than the house. She was warm flesh and 
blood, gentle, tender, generous, ardent, and more 
than ardent. She beat with life, was impulsive and 
quick with life, the one living organism in the dead, 
exquisite air of her environment. 

How could a girl who was like that fall in love 
with Edwin? 

Edwin was short and stocky. His broad-blocked 
shoulders and thin short legs gave him an air of 
clumsiness. How did that top-heavy figure appeal 
to eyes so accustomed to beauty? 

His face was long but rather bull-doggy about 
the jowl. It had that salmon tint that looked out-of- 
door and healthy, but would presently harshen to a 
dry, brittle redness. Not bad-looking, certainly, but 
just a trifle coarse-grained, though his intensely blue 
eyes gave his face a vivid air of wordly geniality, 
of always being in on the joke of life. 

His mind was racy, yes. It could carry on a 
rippling, unwearying conversation of current gaiety. 
It could, with a sudden genius, twist a conversation 
into a shout of laughter by an almost breathless 
suppleness of humour. A comedian’s mind, if you 
like, frivolous, ribald, irreverent, daring, graceless, 
but always the mind of a good companion. But 
outside that, what was there to satisfy Gilda? Edwin, 
apart from specific papers he was careful not to leave 
about where his mother would see them, did not 

54 


SIMPLES 


read. He did not even see, for beauty in any shape 
outside women left him blank. Nor did he listen. 
He was simply the direct antithesis to Gilda and to 
all Gilda stood for. 

Perhaps that was it. 

Alban recalled Edwin’s first meeting with Gilda, 
on his introduction. It had been at a dance. He 
remembered how Edwin had come shouldering his 
way through the rather ethereal and willowy men 
who crowded round Gilda. He stood out by con¬ 
trast. He looked bold, virile, aboundingly masculine. 
Amid that limp crew, he looked like a rough, jovial 
Pan creature come to carry off the wood-nymph, 
Alban thought. 

And he had carried her off. He had swept aside 
the pale human lilies with the animal vigour of his 
gesture, left them limp and inadequate as he rushed 
Gilda off in a sweep of almost boisterous gaiety. 

And Gilda obviously enjoyed it. Alban had never 
realised that Gilda could romp—or might want to. 
He realised that he had never heard her laugh as 
Edwin made her laugh. He thought her a person of 
quiet smiles and ripples of pleasure. That she was 
capable of such youthful, zestful, hearty enjoyment 
had never entered his head. He had made his own 
picture of her and as it were pinned her into the 
frame of it. It was really as though Edwin had 
seen the real youth, had rescued this princess from 
her life among delicate ghosts, and had swept her 
into the strong sunlight of the life she desired. 

That was it, maybe. While the admiration of 

55 


SIMPLES 


others had kept her bound to her own attenuate 
environment, Edwin alone had given her an escape 
into the larger life. She was intoxicated by it, and 
intoxicated by the personality of the man who had 
freed her. And Edwin, he had undoubtedly been 
drawn by the charm of her difference. Her serene 
and fastidious beauty must have been an exquisite 
pleasure after the bolder, less reticent charms he was 
accustomed to. 

That probably was the explanation of this astonish¬ 
ing coming together. In any case the engagement 
was soon a fact, and it was apparently satisfactory. 
Gilda showed herself intensely happy, and Edwin, it 
seemed, had found the woman who was to help him 
lead a newer and finer life. 

iii 

The real reason for Alban’s revolt against the 
engagement was himself, although he was uncon¬ 
scious of this until the serpent tongue of Aunt Heppie 
opened his eyes. 

Alban and Gilda had been good friends until 
Edwin monopolised her. There was from the first 
that in their nature that bound them together. He 
had visited old Conroy because he liked him and 
because of the beauty and serenity of the house, 
Alban thought. His real reason had been Gilda. 

She filled him with a delight in her beauty that 
was practically awe. She gave him a companionship 
such as he had never had and never expected to have 
56 


SIMPLES 


until he met her. It was not merely that they had 
most of their tastes in common, it was that their 
instincts were so astonishingly in tune. 

Gilda understood Alban even in his wildest fads 
—only she called them ideals. That struggling, 
urgent “something” which the Kent family found 
so irritating she saw at once as a clean spirit fighting 
its way to a finer aspect of life. 

When Alban looked at her with his dreamy eyes, 
steel-bright from some light within, and cried: “I 
suppose I put it badly, perhaps even Pm an ass, but 
I can’t make people see that it’s us who count, the 
self here” (thumping her chest). “We’re the key to 
the good of the world. If only each one of us would 
do always the right, the straight, the fair, the decent 
thing, the world would be all right! ”—when he said 
things like that, she understood and would say: 

“I know. It is the business of every man to save 
his own soul, for by that means the whole world of 
souls is saved. After all, that’s just plain Chris¬ 
tianity, Alban.” 

“Well—yes, perhaps. And, after all, has the 
world found anything better than just plain Chris¬ 
tianity, Gilda? When you go back through all the 
creeds and the £ isms,’ the new cults, the New 
Thoughts, the Modern Gospels of Humanity, you 
find that after all you would have saved an immense 
amount of trouble by beginning at the beginning and 
sticking to plain Christianity. There’s nothing in all 
the new creeds and movements that isn’t already in 
plain Christianity, and nobody has ever put a new 

57 


SIMPLES 


brick or a new virtue into the fabric—not even Mrs. 
Eddy, or all the collected spirits of Conan Doyle, or 
the emancipations of Lenin. There’s nothing wrong 
with Christianity as a practical system, though there’s 
an awful lot wrong with Christians.” 

“I see that, and you don’t think that the failure 
of people to be good Christians implies that Chris¬ 
tianity as a practical system doesn’t fit modern human 
beings.” 

“Perhaps—I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. 
No more than the fact that police methods having 
failed to stamp out crime implies that the whole 
human race is criminal. The failures come from 
the human side, not from Christianity, from the 
greediness and indiscipline of man. Some people 
haven’t the guts for it. It is easier to be selfish than 
good. We’re all like that, I suppose. But you can’t 
blame a system if people don’t attempt to carry it 
out, no more than you can blame the brakes for 
a motor smash if you didn’t apply them. And you 
can’t deny that Christianity is a good working system 
if we’d only live up to it. Nobody has ever denied 
it. People have only said it was difficult, incom¬ 
patible, and that’s only another way of saying that 
they preferred enjoying themselves, that they 
haven’t the strength of will to discipline themselves. 
It’s foolish talk to say Christianity is hard. That’s 
what it’s got to be if it’s to do any good. It’s the 
discipline that counteracts the riot of our appetites. 
Anything worth while must be a discipline. There’s 
no escaping that law. Why, you’ve got to discipline 
58 


SIMPLES 

yourself even to be a good Communist or Socialist 
or any other ‘ist.’ And Christianity does get down 
to fundamentals. That ‘saving your own soul 5 is the 
most practical working-rule ever uttered.” 

“Some people reject it as a doctrine of pure self.” 

“All doctrines that better self are doctrines of self. 
You’ve got to begin on self, first because it’s the unit 
of social life, second because it’s no good looking at 
your neighbour and saying, ‘Well, he’s simply fat 
with vices, he ought to try and be a better citizen,’ 
because he can say exactly the same of you. Whereas 
if you act well and perfect yourself he can’t say a 
thing, and if he does, you can’t, and it goes on all the 
way through human society.” 

“That’s the wisdom of Christianity,smiled Gilda. 
“It doesn’t say, Leave things over until you can meet 
together and form a confraternity or a borough coun¬ 
cil or a government and legislate the world into 
goodness.” 

“By by-laws or Militarism or Socialism and so 
forth.” 

“That’s it. It says, Look after yourself. If each 
individual sees to it that he or she is just, honest, 
kindly, loves his neighbour as he does himself, acts 
cleanly, there’ll be no need for by-laws or legisla¬ 
tion. I remember being in a town on the Continent. 
In that town each householder was responsible for 
the cleaning of the street over his own frontage and 
to the middle of the carriage-way, where he linked 
up with the cleaning of the house opposite. As a re¬ 
sult of each individual’s doing his whack of cleaning, 

59 


SIMPLES 


that town has a reputation for being the cleanest in 
the world. That’s a sort of Christianity. The sum 
total of individual efforts made the whole perfect.” 

“Yes, that’s what I’m trying to get at, and it’s so 
hard to make others see it, especially the reverse of 
the picture j that is, that by giving way to weakness 
and meanness we’re letting the world down 5 that 
every time we are weak, uncharitable, unclean, dis¬ 
honest we sin, not merely against God and laws, but 
against the community, against all humanity. You’d 
think they’d see it plain, because after all God and 
laws are humanity, but in the present wallow of 
individuality and indisciplined grabbing after self- 
interest, laws and God are treated as though they 
were something quite aside from self—anyhow, in 
private action. But, I say, do I bore you with my 
vapours?” 

“Of course you don’t, Alban. It’s interesting. It 
seems to me that what you say is the only sound 
course of conduct. I have always thought so.” 

“Splendid, we always do seem to think along the 
same lines, don’t we?” 

iv 

That was true, they found themselves looking 
with the same eyes on most things—character, 
beauty, even humour. 

To Gilda, for instance, Moap’s Farm and the 
country district of Margaretting in which it was 

60 


SIMPLES 


situated had much the same meaning as it had to 
Alban. 

It had no meaning at all to the Kent family save 
as an expression of Alban’s faddiness. Gilda, indeed, 
was rather suspect because she talked of it as the most 
perfect holiday place she knew. 

The Kent ideas of a place for a holiday did not 
coincide. Mrs. Kent, Ethelfleda, and Rosamund, be¬ 
trayed by the enthusiasms of Alban, had tried it for 
what two of them considered one of the most appall¬ 
ing weeks of their lives. Rosamund found for it 
an enthusiasm equal to Alban’s. But, then, she wasn’t 
normal, she was artistic. Moreover she, in her less 
emphatic way, showed that many of the worse 
symptoms of Alban’s nature flowered also in her. 

Emphatically Mrs. Kent and Ethelfleda did not 
like Margaretting. From them one recognised that 
a family tomb was a fount of gaiety by comparison. 
It had no cinema, it had no theatre, there was no 
promenade, there was nothing at all “to do.” At 
Margaretting one simply sat stagnant, confronting 
unlimited masses of scenery and the Atlantic ocean. 

The Kents had no particular use for scenery. It 
was, no doubt, a great asset to the picture postcard 
industry, and it was useful as an anodyne when 
dealing with visitors not conversant with Earlhamp- 
ton gossip nor inclined to discuss frocks or servants. 
But scenery as the sole companion of one’s moments 
of leisure was an unmitigated bore. 

Like many families living dull and stagnant lives 
the Kents liked their holidays full and feverish. 
61 


SIMPLES 


They went to places where there was something “to 
do” every precious minute, where there was no 
need for them to sink back and rely upon themselves. 
Margaretting forced them to do that. And the 
rooms at Margaretting were without a bath-room. 

“We had to slide ourselves into a hip-bath,” 
Ethelfleda cried in humorous horror. “It was ap¬ 
palling, curling oneself up in that totally inadequate 
thimble. Sometimes we stuck. I know the secret 
feeling of sardines now—if sardines have feelings.” 

Margaretting, to them, was one obsessing bath. 
But it meant a great deal to Gilda. She had spent 
many holidays there simply because there was no 
cinema, or theatre, or “monkey parade,” and because 
she did not let small baths bulk between her and 
beauty. 

The family, rather suspicious of anyone who dared 
to extract a son by marriage from the Kent family 
group, were confirmed in their knowledge that Gilda 
Conroy was rather strange, and the prospective 
alliance rather dubious. 

But to Alban her attitude gave her an added 
glamour. She knew and gloried in Margaretting 
as he knew and gloried in it. 

She even liked the people there, w T hom the Kents 
thought so stodgy. She liked the brisk old character 
who had insisted upon his grand-daughter being 
christened Angina because it was a pretty name, and 
because he had a tender feeling for something that 
had been with him so long. 

She liked Alban’s picture of old Moap, tall, lean, 
6 2 


SIMPLES 


austere, quizzical, and patriarchal, wandering among 
his simples with singing names, his dog Moreover at 
his heel. 

“Moreover?” Gilda asked. “That’s a quaint 
name for a dog.” 

“Biblical,” said Alban, drily. 

“Biblical, how?” 

“Moap says it is. Moreover is an Irish terrier, and 
I thought he was called to some Irish fancy. But 
old Moap said no, his family is prone to Old Testa¬ 
ment names, and the dog’s name came from the 
same source.” 

“Is the name Moreover in the Bible?” cried Gilda. 
“I can’t believe it.” 

“Just what I said. But old Moap quoted a verse 
from the story of Dives and Lazarus that goes: ‘And 
Moreover the dog licked his sores.’ ” 

“He must be an original, I should love to meet 
him,” said Gilda when she had finished laughing. 

“You will, and he is an original. That’s why his 
farm as a Materia Medica farm doesn’t pay as it 
should. He treats it as a sort of medieval fancy, 
being more inclined to pay attention to some old herb 
than to his paying fields of Belladonna. For 
instance, the last time I was there he scarcely had 
the patience to discuss an improved strain he’d got 
in yarrow because he was so full of an old idea about 
laurels being useful as a protection against lightning. 
He’d read somewhere that the Emperor Tiberius 
wore laurel wreaths for this reason, and he had a 
wild theory of using the leaves to counteract the in- 

63 


SIMPLES 


creasing electrical forces which modern times have 
loosed. It was hfs idea that the present tendency 
towards neurosis might be checked by the leaves.” 

a That doesn’t sound quite balanced, Alban.” 

“He isn’t, actually. He’s a sweet old madman 
when he talks of his simples. On the other hand no 
one can be more sound and practical. He’s improved 
the strains of certain drug plants so tremendously 
that they can defy the German, Austrian, and Balkan 
growers even at cut-throat rates. If he gave himself 
wholly to practical cultivation he’d make a fair, if 
not a big, income, instead of working at a loss.” 

“Can he go on at a loss?” 

“He can’t, and he’s beginning to realise it. He is 
willing to sell out—if I’ll buy.” 

“And you want to buy?” she smiled. 

“You’d know that,” he smiled back. “Of course 
I do.” 

On the day of this talk they had crossed the broad 
sea-water inlet that leads to Earlhampton docks called 
the Estuary, and had bicycled to a tiny headland over 
the water. As he spoke Alban turned and stared over 
the sea pressing in short, brilliant waves up the 
Estuary. A big freighter was booming its way to 
the docks, with bright yachts ahead of it scurrying out 
of the fairway like frightened chickens. Two grimy 
tugs were fussing about the steamer, their foul, black 
smoke smearing the quick green of the trees on the 
further shore, trailing the white pile of an old ruined 
abbey and even the blue sky with filthy smudges. 

64 


SIMPLES 


Watching this smoke-soiled landscape he said 
dreamily: 

“It appeals to me. There’s something simple, 
clean, and natural about that sort of life. It seems 
to me the only sort of existence where one can give 
oneself a chance. I mean by that—myself. Pm not 
being superior about modern life and progress, you 
know. I know most people love it and can’t exist 
without its bustle, its zest, its strenuosity, its electric, 
all-conquering spirit. They’re right, of course, for 
themselves. But I’m not quite their sort. I’m what 
Dunstan, who’s all machinery and the marvels of the 
age, calls a damned reactionary.” 

He paused watching a bowline uncoiling like a 
snake across a patch of sky between the freighter and 
one of the tugs. 

“Maybe I’m a damned reactionary,” he went on. 
“But I’m not going to sneer at others because they 
don’t feel as I feel. All I say is that for me the 
world is so strenuous that it gives me no time to think 
anything or do anything.” 

He rolled onto his elbow and smiled into the 
beautiful oval face of the girl. 

“Doesn’t it ever seem queer to you that all the 
modern advantages, all the labour and time-saving 
things—telephones, trains, motor-cars, ’busses, trams, 
wireless, the whole speeding-up of everything—re¬ 
sults not in giving man more leisure but in robbing 
him of it? With all his Twentieth Century ad¬ 
vantages man is infinitely less reposeful and at ease 
than a man of several hundred years ago who 

65 


SIMPLES 


possessed none of these marvellous contrivances to 
save him time and wear and tear.” 

“That sounds rather like an echo of my father,” 
said Gilda. 

“Oh, one’s fathers aren’t always wrong, even in 
this age,” grinned Alban. 

“A Daniel come to judgment,” she mocked gently. 

“Besides,” he went on, “I’m not against my ad¬ 
vantages. I should hate to have to do all my read¬ 
ing in the bad print of our forefathers or by the aid 
of a tallow dip. I like electricity. I like good sani¬ 
tation, and good roads, and motor cars. I like all 
modern contrivances. What I don’t like is their 
tendency to crowd and command me to the exclusion 
of other things. They ought to help me live more 
spaciously and serenely. That’s what they were 
invented for. Instead they make living more rapid, 
packed, and complex. Man is a slave to his ad¬ 
vantages now. That’s why I’d like to live on Moap’s 
Farm with certain modern conveniences and all the 
old attractions.” 

“Such as beauty, serenity, good books, and time to 
enjoy them; good music and time to enjoy it; 
thought, contemplation, dreaming . . .” said 
Gilda, softly. 

“And decent living, no grasping or grabbing or 
manoeuvring to get the better of others, or fighting 
to get on top of someone else. No particular social 
or economic competition to make one hate one’s 
neighbour even more than one hates oneself.” 

“It’s a lovely dream,” said Gilda, softly, more 

66 


SIMPLES 


than half in that dream herself. “But maybe it’s 
only that. The rivalries of Arcadia can be just as 
bitter as those of cities.” 

“A Miss Daniel come to judgment,” he smiled. 
“I should say you were right, but I fancy one could 
hide from them more easily in the country. And 
then, if I could get hold of Moap’s place, I would 
only use it as a sort of harbour of refuge.” 

He explained to her that he couldn’t, and wouldn’t 
leave Earlhampton for good. He couldn’t leave his 
work at the Factory, partly because he couldn’t afford 
to, and partly because he was too interested. Kent 
Drugs was in his blood naturally. What he aimed to 
do was to make Moap’s Farm a sideline of the 
Factory as well as a place of retreat. They could 
draw direct from it for such drugs as were “official” 
in the Pharmacopoeia, and at the same time use it for 
experimental work among the old herbs that had 
dropped out of fashion. 

In fact the Farm couldn’t be handled in any other 
way, it wasn’t a real livelihood for any man, and 
with the drastic changes Alban would make, changes 
that would eat up money, they couldn’t expect to 
run it at anything but a loss for three, four, or even 
five years. Even when it began to pay there 
wouldn’t be luxuries in it, just living for a man and 
a little over. 

“But I’d count my holidays there part of my 
profit,” smiled Alban, “though Oswald can’t see that 
as an asset. Also I’d like to take the place because 
with me in command old Moap wouldn’t be driven 
67 


SIMPLES 


out of his Paradise. He could still potter round 
any day he liked and kiss his fingers at his beloved 
Wild Marjoram, Sweet Clary, Shepherd’s Purse, 
Lady’s Smock, and Selfheal.” 

“What gorgeous names they have, Alban.” 

“Yes, they lure you with their music. That’s one 
of Edwin’s jokes by the way. He said, in that quick 
way of his, c l suppose you plant ’em all in a stave and 
play ’em ... or sing ’em.’ ” 

“What a queer boy Edwin is,” laughed Gilda, her 
face suddenly quick and soft. “He has a mind like 
quicksilver at times.” 

“Hasn’t he?” Alban cried. “It’s really genius. 
He startles with his verbal flash. And it’s more 
astonishing because it comes from some extraordinary 
natural supply within. He doesn’t read.” 

“Why should he?” said Gilda, quickly. “Some 
people read too much, are fuddled with reading.” 

v 

Alban was faintly surprised at the tone in which 
Gilda had championed Edwin. But it conveyed no 
warning to him either of her interest in Edwin or 
of the condition of his own heart. 

He knew then that she was seeing a great deal of 
Edwin, and that when Edwin was not travelling, 
ostensibly for Kent Drugs, it was practically im¬ 
possible to have Gilda to himself. Even that did not 
mean much to him. He did not realise that he was in 
love with Gilda himself. It is a curious fact that 
68 



SIMPLES 


many Anglo-Saxon males at least can enjoy and in 
fact seek out the companionship of a girl and con¬ 
tinue that companionship for years on an almost 
intimate basis without realising they are in love. 

Perhaps Alban was a little too much in awe of 
Gilda to admit he was in love with her, and Gilda 
would have been as startled at a proposal as Alban 
would have been at finding himself making it. Gilda 
was not even dimly in love with him then. Indeed 
his great charm to her was that there was none of the 
annoyance of love about their friendship. 

Alban to her was a relief from the thin, vitiated 
air of her home. She liked him for his healthy 
dreaminess, his queerness, his spontaneity, his direct¬ 
ness, and for what her father called “his Galahad 
spirit.” She liked him for his tall, thin, quick move¬ 
ments—not one of them reticent or considered. She 
liked his narrow, lean face with his unrestrained 
emotions lighting and darkening it, and the blue eyes 
dreaming or shining in it. 

It was, she knew, not really a handsome face, too 
long, too irregular, and the bony structure too ap¬ 
parent for good looks. But it was a clean, strong 
face, a jolly face, a pleasant, sincere, and sympathetic 
face. It was a face at once ingenuous and of curious 
spiritual wisdom, austere and yet whimsical, resolute 
and yet curiously tender. The face of a boy impul¬ 
sive, idealistic, healthy, and fine-minded, but dogged 
and obstinate, too, and inclined to find in opposition 
a reason not for surrender but for fighting. 

She said once: “You’ve got a wild flare in your 

69 


SIMPLES 


eyes sometimes, Alban. A fanatic fire. There are 
times when you look as though you were ready to 
go to the stake and even enjoy the fire for the sake 
of your ideals.” 

“Ideals do blot out things,” agreed Alban. “I 
suppose that’s how those old martyr people felt. 
Only I’m not martyr stuff, my ideals are only tin-pot 
little fads.” 

“Like trying to be straight, to be clean, to be fair 
—tin-pot things like that,” smiled Gilda. 


70 


Qhapter IV 


i 

G ILDA’S engagement to Edwin was a shock to 
Alban because, as has been said, it was so un¬ 
expected. But it was not a shock that awakened 
Alban. It took Aunt Heppie’s penetrating venom to 
do that. Even then it was less realisation of his 
love than the knowledge that Edwin was not acting 
fairly towards Gilda that moved him most acutely. 

They had been engaged months only, and yet al¬ 
ready Edwin was back at his old beastliness, and had 
actually left Gilda to face Aunt Heppie alone while 
he went off to Brackenhurst to visit his old fancy, 
the flash, opulent widow, Mrs. Hogarth, who had a 
pretty income from her late husband’s tied-houses to 
adorn her violent and brass-haired personality. 
Alban was thoroughly disturbed because the old 
Edwin had not really changed his spots, and Edwin 
himself, in his bold and sly way, was inclined to make 
things worse. 

Edwin had developed a subtle change with growth. 
His character, his manner, his outlook had coarsened. 
His lively wit had become more and more tinged with 
malice, and that malice more and more aimed at 
Alban. He had heard of Aunt Heppie’s home- 
thrust, because he never failed to hear of things. He 
7i 


SIMPLES 


had become one of your hearty, legs-spread-apart 
fellows forever leeringly in the know. 

Ethelfleda undoubtedly carried the news to him. 
That insistent champion of Edwin, that pulpy female 
knight-errant of the racketty one, with her loose grey 
flesh that was so inclined to puff everywhere—calves, 
hips, breasts—like an unhealthy fungus, whispered 
into ears utterly unconcerned at her errantry the story 
of Aunt Heppie’s exposure of Alban. She told be¬ 
cause with all the affection of her blood she detested 
her brother Alban, and because she hated Gilda. 

She hated her future sister-in-law with a sweeping 
loathing. She hated her for liking Alban, for seeing 
the real talent in Rosamund’s paintings, but above 
all because she had the effrontry to become engaged 
to Edwin. There is no doubt about it, there are many 
women who hate those other women who mate with 
their brothers and sons. It is something more than 
resentment at an alien intrusion. It is the hatred 
of the robbed for the robber, for the siren who can 
allure what they cannot hold. Mrs. Kent had this 
feeling faintly. She did not quite see how Gilda 
had a right to be so beautiful when her father 
was a mere schoolmaster. She felt that Gilda had 
“superior ways.” She was perhaps secretly a little 
terrified of what might happen when one so fasti¬ 
dious discovered the real coarseness of her son’s 
nature. Already in advance she was up in arms 
against this girl’s coming disgust at her son. 

Ethelfleda’s feelings were not faint. They were 
powerful and genuine. And in her oblique, feminine 
72 


SIMPLES 


way she told Edwin of the Aunt Heppie incident 
because she knew she was striking at Gilda as much 
as Alban. 

She was not mistaken. Edwin made the most of 
the matter. With gusto he began to play the part 
of the man in the way of lovers when they meet. He 
enjoyed that form of humour now. Perhaps he had 
reached a stage when, the zest of conquering this 
exquisite and aloof woman having waned, he needed 
something fresh to stimulate his interest in her. To 
see her blush, to see the bewilderment and pain come 
to her eyes, to watch her puzzled, pitiable attempts to 
play up to the joke was a peculiar source of satisfac¬ 
tion to him. It almost made him give up his visits 
to Brackenhurst. 

He developed a whole repertoire of fancies. He 
would say, “Oh, awfully sorry, I didn’t see it was 
Alban with you,” and pretend to withdraw tactfully 
if he came upon them together. 

At table he would say, if she wanted him to sup¬ 
port some statement, “No, are you sure you spoke to 
me about that? You’re not confusing me with Alban, 
are you?” 

He was a master of that sort of thing, and played 
the game with a hundred variations. He would 
make it seem that the only sure way of getting 
Gilda to some party or outing was to promise her that 
Alban would be present. He would pretend that 
the only way to get her to do something was to beg 
Alban to ask her to do it. 

A mean game, but one that seemed to give him 

73 


SIMPLES 


peculiar joy. It was a new way of stirring up one 
he was already finding too tempered and fastidious 
in emotion for his more hearty taste. 

And he stirred her up. He perplexed, pained, and 
even frightened her. Her sensitive mind telling her 
something was wrong, she was in terror of losing 
him. She was deeply in love, deeper than she would 
be later when she began to see him more clearly, and 
the threat of loss was agony to her. 

He knew it. His experience of women had given 
him an intimate perception of her and the way to 
torture her. And Alban, watching him at it, 
wondered at the unloveliness of it and speculated 
what was behind it. Was Edwin tired of her already 
and trying to sicken her? Or was he just naturally 
cruel and cold-hearted as that wretched girl, Gertie 
Woodrun, had declared? 

He couldn’t himself remain calm under it. When 
Gilda looked at his brother with brow puzzled and 
eyes full of pain, and cried, “Why do you say things 
like that, Edwin? Is anything the matter? Have 
I done anything to upset you?” he had to snap out 
himself: 

“Don’t worry Gilda. That kind of vulgarity 
seems to Eddie the highest form of humour.” 

His pointed chin was thrust out and his eyes had 
points of cold fire in them. And his manner said: 
“I’ve let you understand you’re a damn cad. Are 
you going to take that lying down, or are you going 
to give me a chance to smash your face?” 

But Edwin merely grinned as he did at any home 

74 


SIMPLES 


truth now. Since Alban had grown a head taller 
than himself, inches broader round the chest, and 
his muscles were iron-hard with clean living against 
his slack and indulged muscles, he recognised that 
the crude methods of school-days were no longer 
commendable. Besides, quite half of his fun was 
to have this hot-headed fool twisting violently on a 
pin. It had become more and more one of the in¬ 
stincts of his life to attack Alban and to enjoy every 
exhibition of vehement, cold fierceness in his brother 
—and fear it a little. But, to give Edwin his due, 
fear was not the least pleasurable of his own sensa¬ 
tions. It was like playing with fire, and Edwin was 
steadily developing his passion for fire. 

The two brothers stood facing each other for a 
minute. It seemed as though this time Alban’s 
anger would reach a breaking-point, and he would 
strike Edwin. Mrs. Kent looking on anxiously 
thought so. She called from the fireside: “Oh, 
Alban, you might come and tell me the figures re¬ 
lating to Moap’s Farm. I’ve been talking to Oswald 
. . . there are one or two points I wish you’d make 
clearer.” 

ii 

Mrs. Kent was finding it necessary to be diplomatic 
in her home, and more than diplomatic. As she said 
after this “appalling exhibition” to Oswald: 

“Something will have to be done, and soon. One 
day things will overstep the mark, and I shudder to 

75 


SIMPLES 


think what will happen. Brothers at fisticuffs over 
a woman! Think what people would say.” 

Oswald, who was having too many cabinet meet¬ 
ings lately, growled: “Edwin is a confounded and 
disgusting young fool. I J m getting sick to death of 
him.” 

“He’s not tactful,” said Mrs. Kent, judicially. 
“No, he’s not at all tactful.” 

“That doesn’t begin to describe him,” snarled Os¬ 
wald. “Why can’t he behave himself? He’s en¬ 
gaged to a nice girl, and yet he can’t run straight 
even now. . . 

There was that silence for a space in which a man 
is expected to feel that he has blundered. Then: 

“I was meaning,” said Mrs. Kent, primly, “that 
Edwin is not acting too wisely in front of Alban, and 
I fear that Alban may do something scandalous if it 
goes on much longer.” 

“It’s Edwin’s fault,” snapped Oswald, taking his 
blunder out on Edwin. “He is behaving like a damn 
fool and a cad to pretend the things he does about 
Gilda and Alban.” 

“It’s wrong, I know,” said Mrs. Kent, picking 
bird-pecks at her dress. “But, then, you see, he does 
see that Alban is in love with Gilda.” 

“Good God,” from Oswald, staring like an as¬ 
tonished bull, “that’s rubbish.” 

Mrs. Kent said: “Oh, it’s true. He is in love with 
her. Aunt Heppie saw it at once. It’s obvious to 
most people. . . . The way he looks at her . . .” 


SIMPLES 


Oswald stared open-mouthed. “Good God,” he 
exploded, “I simply don’t believe it.” 

Mrs. Kent’s manner became abruptly, stiffly tragic: 
“It is always the way. A girl, an utter stranger, 
comes into a home and the house is at once divided.” 

Oswald, still fighting to recover reason after the 
shock, ignored tragedy: “Look here, do you mean 
that she—she—” 

“Oh—oh, I am saying nothing against dear Gilda. 
Nothing!” There was noble protest in the denial, 
but for once Oswald went straight to the sub-inten¬ 
tion beneath. 

“But look here, that’s what you are implying. 
You’re hinting that there is something between 
them.” 

“No—never! I know my own sons too well to 
suspect them of—of . . .” She remembered that 
she knew Edwin rather better. “I mean, I’m imply¬ 
ing nothing definite. I feel that as far as she is 
able Gilda is genuinely in love with Edwin. Yes, I 
am certain of it.” 

“That’s what I think, and I’m certain she’s not 
at all the sort of girl . . 

Mrs. Kent said swiftly, snatching him back from 
the vague, rosy fields of male idealism: “Of course 
it is difficult for some girls to resist admiration. It is 
only natural, I suppose, for a pretty girl to feel that 
she can influence men.” 

“You’re hinting that you think she is leading him 
on a bit?” said Oswald. 

“Oh, no . . . or if she is, it is quite innocent,” 

77 


SIMPLES 


said Mrs. Kent, with the air of one actually defend¬ 
ing Gilda against a grave charge ruthlessly pressed 
by Oswald. “I don’t think she realises she is doing 
it. She means nothing, but I suppose Edwin can’t 
help seeing . . 

“Edwin,” snapped Oswald, as though the very 
name touched off a powder charge, “I’m coming to 
the limits of my patience with Edwin.” 

“But, Oswald, if he sees . . . innocent though 
-she may be . . . he’s bound to feel annoyed.” 

“That’s no excuse for a fellow behaving like a 
brute. He ought to know by now, when he’s got a 
straight, sweet, charming girl . . 

Mrs. Kent said nothing, but her compressed lips 
said much. Oswald went on: 

“If he doesn’t like her intimacy with Alban, he 
ought to be man enough to tell her straight out. 
Though, knowing Alban and her, I can’t see how he’s 
got a thing to complain of. If he’s tired of the girl 
... I say, Mother, has that occurred to you? Do 
you think all this arises from the feeling that he has 
made a mistake?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Of course, 
the glamour does wear off when you get to know 
someone—really.” 

“Well, if that’s how he feels, it’d be more hon¬ 
ourable of him to break off the engagement. Best 
thing for her—I sometimes think.” 

“That depends on her point of view, doesn’t it?” 
said Mrs. Kent, a trifle too sweetly. 

78 


SIMPLES 


“You mean she’s ver]' much in love,” said Oswald, 
which was not at all what Mrs. Kent meant. 

“I mean, I don’t think she’ll give him up readily,” 
murmured Mrs. Kent, wondering why men were so 
dense. But Oswald was no longer thinking of that. 
He was thinking of Edwin and the messes Edwin 
had had to be got out of—by him. 

“It seems to me,” he said, putting his thoughts into 
words, “that he’s tiring of her—now he’s got her. 
And that and other things—” he looked furtively at 
his mother and then at the carpet again—“makes me 
think that it would be a good thing to send him away. 
It could be managed. I can pack him off on a long 
tour to see Continental buyers. That might give an 
excuse for a—a sort of break, and keep him out of 
the way while things are straightening out.” 

“I’m afraid that will make no difference—with 
Gilda,” said his mother, sadly. 

“You feel she’s too fond of him to give him up?” 

Again Mrs. Kent felt nothing of the sort. She 
resolved to speak plainly to a nature incapable of re¬ 
acting to hints. 

“I feel that,” she said gently. “And then—it’s a 
thing I don’t like saying, that I wouldn’t even hint 
to an outsider—but, after all, Edwin is a partner in 
Kent Drugs, and an underpaid schoolmaster’s 
daughter fully appreciates what that means.” 

That penetrated at last. Oswald changed his stare 
at the carpet to a scowl at the hearth-rug. There was 
immediately no doubt in his mind that his mother, 
with her wondrous feminine intuition and directness, 

79 


SIMPLES 


had put her finger on a major point. To the woolly 
mind of Oswald, Kent Drugs was a concern obviously 
tremendous. He felt that everyone in Earlhampton 
regarded it with the awe and wonder he himself felt 
for it. And that being so, it seemed to him, as it 
seemed to the older generation of Kents, that few 
girls, however charming, independent, and high- 
minded, could resist the chance of being linked with 
the Kents, mated with Kent Drugs and Kent affluence. 

Truly his mother had made the final, the irrefut¬ 
able statement. And though he said, “Oh, I don’t 
know. I don’t think Gilda Conroy is the sort of girl 
to be influenced like that,” he felt that it was merely 
his masculine chivalry arguing against an indestruc¬ 
tible verity. 

And his mother immediately made taut and 
snugged down her point, “Ah, that’s your chivalry 
speaking,” which was flattering, and reconfirmed his 
opinion of his mother’s immense acumen. “I’m not 
saying anything against the girl. I think she loves 
Edwin genuinely, but one must recognise the plain 
fact that she’s not altogether foolish or blind about 
the advantages of marrying a partner in Kent Drugs. 
No sensible girl would be.” 

“And I do think she’s fond of Edwin,” said Os¬ 
wald, feebly capitulating. 

“Of course, I shouldn’t dream of thinking other¬ 
wise,” said his mother, recognising he had capitulated, 
and allowing him all his quaint male ideal. “I’m 
only pointing out that there is no hope of ending this 
dreadful situation by sending Edwin away.” 

8o 


SIMPLES 


“Well, but what else can we do?” 

“Alban must go to his Farm.” 

iii 

Mrs. Kent’s careful generalship had brought her 
to that. She had pinned her son into a corner where 
he must admit that the only way out was to give 
Alban the Farm that Oswald despised and feared. 

Oswald was ready to fight against the Farm both 
as a man who feared novelty, and that it would lead 
his wild brother even further astray, and as a busi¬ 
ness man who detested what he considered a bad com¬ 
mercial proposition. He did advance all these points, 
but at a disadvantage. Mrs. Kent had him beaten. 
She had already proved to him that the only way to 
ease the situation was to get Alban out of the way. 
The only way to get Alban away was to buy him the 
Farm and maroon him on that Farm. 

And she had done this for a reason far beyond even 
Oswald’s woolly conception of the situation. 

Oswald admitted that the Farm had uses, that they 
did buy drug-herbs from it, and that they could buy 
more. He admitted that in time, after Alban had re¬ 
planned and developed it, it might be run at a small 
profit. But he saw no reason at all of linking that 
crazy Farm with solid Kent Drugs, of letting the 
fantastic concern be a drag on Kent Drugs. 

It was then that Mrs. Kent advanced the second 
factor of her plan. She said quietly: “It won’t be 
81 


SIMPLES 


that—necessarily. It will be a separate business—of 
Alban’s.” 

Oswald did not see where that was leading. He 
said stubbornly: “I’m afraid it won’t. It’ll be a sort 
of side-line of the Firm’s. That’s how Alban sees it.” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Kent, “but we do not necessarily 
regard it in that light.” 

Oswald sat up, breathing quickly. He couldn’t 
quite believe his mother’s line. He knew very well 
that Alban regarded the Farm merely as a side-line; 
that he would not approach the purchase in any other 
way. And yet, from her very tone he saw that his 
mother was determined to make it something totally 
different. Into his dazed and rather scared brain 
there flashed the clauses of his father’s will. If a 
child set up in another business outside Kent Drugs 
he was to be allowed to do so—but he would cease 
to have any interest or rights in Kent Drugs in future. 
Oswald knew that his mother was planning to attack 
Alban through that clause. He moistened his lips, 
and said thickly: “But if Alban thought . . .” 

His mother was not going to allow the sentimental 
male to voice his thoughts. As one who was de¬ 
termined to do the right thing despite the anguish of 
her mother’s heart, she said: “I don’t want Alban 
to think I’m not acting in his own interests—if I can 
help it, Oswald. I know that he regards the Farm 
as a side-issue. I am willing that he should go on 
thinking so—that it should be so. But we’ve got to 
look ahead. For one thing, Alban himself might 
decide that he likes herb-farming better than the 
82 


SIMPLES 


factory work- Well, there he’ll be with his separate 
business, as the will provides, already bought for 
him. Again, there might be difficulties over the 
partnership.” Oswald gulped a little. “In that case 
I, both of us, would feel so grateful that we had 
seized this chance he has so begged and implored for, 
and that he actually has this separate business behind 
him if—if we had to refuse him any part in Kent 
Drugs.” 

That was her way of putting it, but Oswald under¬ 
stood the true meaning behind it. The classic parallel 
did not occur to him, but his emotions were Mac¬ 
beth’s when he realised what Lady Macbeth had let 
him in for. He almost feared his mother, but he 
admired her enormously, too. 

For very plainly and finally she had planned to 
wipe out Alban if he ever proved too dangerous and 
troublesome. Buying this farm for him would do 
that. Alban would think it no more than a little 
speculation on the part of Kent Drugs. It would be 
nothing of the sort. It would rank as a separate 
business bought for Alban. Under the will the law 
would hold that all his interests in Kent Drugs ceased 
at its purchase. 

Oswald was morally winded. And yet elated. He 
had always disliked the idea of Alban being a partner, 
had always dreaded the time when that vigorous, 
radical, speculative, and rather wild mind would as¬ 
sume a status equal to his own. That would inevi¬ 
tably mean a clash of wills, and he feared for the 
supremacy of his own. And to be honest, his fears 

83 


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were for the firm and the family since he was stolidly 
sure that only his level brain could safeguard the 
family interests, whereas Alban’s idealism would 
wreck them. 

Nevertheless he felt that he was being mean and 
underhand—sly. That was because, being slow, he 
could only yet see the truth of such a deed, without 
any moral excuses to befog it. 1 fis mother saw all of 
his mind. She went on steadily: 

“You mustn’t think I’m acting in any way but as a 
mother should, Oswald. I don’t wish to- to be un¬ 
kind to Alban. Nothing need be said to him. I 
mean the harm can go on stwminy t to be but a side 
line of the business. If, as I hope and pray, Alban 
turns out to be everything we desire, if fie settles 
down . . . well, nothing would please us better 
than to take him into partnership without saying any¬ 
thing. You feel as 1 do, 1 know, Oswald.” 

“Oh . . . oh, yes . . . Good business man, 
All»an. Jf he weren’t so viewy . . .” 

“That’s it viewy,” said Mrs. Kent, as though 
gathering strength from the wisdom of her eldest. 
“It is his viewiness that fills us with anxiety. And 
and I’ve got to think not merely of Alban, but of 
all my children. I’ve got to protect them, too. And 
if his viewiness endangers them, you see what I 
mean, don’t you, Oswald . . . 

Oswald saw at once that he had been given quite 
the strongest moral weapons for lighting the instinct 
that he was a cheat. I Jc said with warm gratitude 

u Of course you’ve got to think of the rest, all of 

84 



SIMPLES 


us, Mother. I know you can’t do a thing like this 
without much heart-burning, but —well, the well¬ 
being of the majority counts most. The greatest good 
for the greater number. It’s not fair to let one ruin 
the future of all.” 

“You think Pm right, Oswald?” 

“Utterly right, Mother,” said Oswald, hardly able 
to suppress his elation at the feeling that now his 
supremacy in Kent Drugs would never be challenged, 
and only quenching it with a distinctly moral frown. 
“You always think for the best, dear.” 

“And you think we could manage to buy Moap’s 
Farm without — ?” 

“Without Alban suspecting that we . . .” began 
Oswald, and was pulled up by his mother’s frown. 

“Without hurting dear Alban’s feelings, I mean,” 
she said pointedly. “I don’t want him ever to feel 
that I am acting against him, because really Pm not 
—if he acts sensibly.” 

“Oh, it can be managed easily,” said Oswald. “The 
lawyers are very tactful. Pll see them on my way 
to the office. And as for Alban, there won’t be any 
trouble. He’ll sign anything we suggest —to get 
that Farm.” 

That was Oswald’s way of saying that Alban 
trusted them too much to suspect anything under¬ 
hand. 

“Well, Pll leave it all to you,” said Mrs. Kent. 
“How soon could he go down to the Farm to take 
it over?” 


85 


SIMPLES 


“At once,” said Oswald. “There’s really nothing 
here that we need him for.” 

And that was true. A tangle which had led Os¬ 
wald to call Alban back from the Farm, which had 
cost Oswald months of agonising and temporising, 
had been settled out of hand by Alban in a handful of 
days. He had done his work so well that it could go 
forward now without any worry. The whole situa¬ 
tion was favourable for the tactful banishment of 
Alban. Alban, beginning to worry again about 
Edwin in his relationship to Gilda, suddenly had that 
worry wiped out by the new wonder. Meeting Gilda 
coming out of a new and glittering draper’s that 
looked like a false jewel in the old setting of Above- 
the-Ward, he showed her a face from which anxieties 
had been banished. They stopped and talked, and 
suddenly, “Have you anything special to do at this 
vital moment?” he laughed. 

She said “No” with a faint blush, for she had ar¬ 
ranged to give that afternoon entirely to Edwin, 
and, not for the first time, he had sent a little note 
putting her off. But Alban in his present mood did 
not note the blush. 

“Well, then,” he said, “come with me to the old 
Witan Ring. I have special rites to perform.” He 
smiled in his odd exultance and she warmed to that 
smile. 

“Rites. What rites?” 

“Shiss,” he laughed back. “Just to mention them 
here might give their peculiar magic a nasty twist. 

86 


SIMPLES 


Talk quickly about humdrum subjects, so that the 
Local Influence will not guess.” 

They talked quickly, gaily, trailing pennons of 
laughing exchanges as they walked, dodging round 
sober-minded people on side-walks that were me¬ 
dieval but crowded. They climbed steadily through 
the town. They crossed the old Moatlands, where 
pilgrims from the Continent used to camp and re¬ 
cover from seasickness before marching piously to the 
great shrine of St. Rood. They went up through 
the sleek, meek-faced little square, to which old 
lindens and new flowers and the aura of one famous 
hymn writer and two superior, second-rate historians 
imparted a Georgian charm; along Scutage Street, 
where, to the right, steep stone steps shot down to the 
silted flat that had once been part of the famous 
Earlhampton Estuary. On the left of Scutage Street 
there lived, even then, a poor creature who might 
have been the origin of Dickens’s Miss Havisham, 
for little boys, climbing thrillingly up iron railings, 
could look into the parlour at a wedding-breakfast 
uneaten and mouldering to dust, and, with luck, 
might catch a glimpse of a lank, faded woman clad 
in wedding garments that knew no wedding, prowling 
like a ghost about the table. 

They went up through the thinning residential 
district that melted to The Open, a common that was 
at one time part of the great royal preserves covering 
all this district. To the left then, to where a small, 
regular clump of trees stood out of the gorse-clad 

87 


SIMPLES 


heath on the very lip of the hill that overhung the 
city. 

They sat there and looked over the tight-packed 
houses, silent for so long that Gilda felt she had to 
say at last: “May one, even in a whisper, mention it? 
The Rite—what is it?” 

“You can shout it,” Alban laughed back. “It is a 
rite of triumph—over all that.” 

His arm indicated the city and docks of Earl- 
hampton with a gesture. Gilda looked down at 
them, and thought them picturesque and romantic 
enough to be loved and not triumphed over. 

Before them lay packed the older part of the city. 
At first it was a jumble of crazy roofs and fantastic 
chimneys, with a soft blur of smoke toning it down, 
and the old spires rising out of that blur, and one or 
two new factory stacks, and beyond roofs and spires 
and stacks the lift of ships’ masts and funnels, loom¬ 
ing strangely large and out of drawing, and their 
reds, buffs, and blacks sharp against the quick shining 
of the harbour water behind them. 

At first that was all one saw, a crowded, little pro¬ 
vincial port with walls and chimneys all twisty and 
awry like the goblin town of a fairy-tale drawing. As 
one looked detail and history emerged. There was 
the Norman-on-Saxon tower and spire of St. Cuth- 
man’s, where the French had broken in twice and 
massacred the whole congregation at prayer. That 
tapering pencil was Holy Blood, where Philip of 
Spain had heard Mass on his way to meet his bride, 
Queen Mary. One could just see the line of the 
88 


SIMPLES 


Norman wall, and the tip of the Salt Gate, near the 
water edge, through which armoured troops had 
passed to Crecy. The Ward was plain to them, the 
solid, squat land-gate still carrying the spikes on 
which the heads of pirates, idealists, traitors, martyrs, 
and other treasonable fellows had been stuck. The 
old beamed house with the false roof in which the 
third Earl Hampton had hidden against the wrath 
of a king could not be seen, but one knew exactly 
where it was. 

History and colour were in that town and could 
be enjoyed as one analysed. It was a symphony in 
quaint roofs and mellow red-brick, with lindens 
splashing it in fairy touches of green. 

“Why crow over it?” smiled Gilda. “I think it 
rather charming.” 

“It is rather charming,” he agreed. “I withdraw 
triumph over it. The triumph is over its modern 
spirit. It is the triumph of the escaping victim. I’m 
escaping, Gilda.” 

“Alban,” she cried. “Alban!” 

Her tone startled him. She was looking at him 
with parted lips, her eyes wide, an air of consterna¬ 
tion on her face. He refused to believe she had gone 
pale—but she looked pale. 

He turned doggedly and stared over the town. 
What he thought he had seen he refused to believe 
—he must not believe. He said in a consciously gay 
voice. 

“Isn’t it great? I’m escaping, going away.” 

She said after a distinct pause, “To Margaretting?” 

89 


SIMPLES 


“Moap’s Farm has been bought,” he said, and he 
waited anxiously. 

Then: “But, Alban, that’s wonderful. You must 
be beside yourself with joy.” 

He turned swiftly. Yes, he had been utterly 
wrong to—to imagine anything. The clear, genuine 
gladness in her voice, the glowing pleasure in her 
face and eyes was merely the sympathy of a good 
friend. He’d been a conceited ass to think the news 
had saddened her. 

“It’s settled,” he said. “I’ve persuaded them at 
last. Even dear old go-slow-and-go-far Oswald. 
I knew they must in time see that the Farm was a 
good, practical proposition as well—as—well—as a 
fad of mine. It’s going to be immense fun . . 

He went off at top speed telling her all the fun 
it would be, what he meant to do to the Farm to give 
it a commercial backbone without robbing it of its 
essential charm. 

“You fill me with envy,” she said with a certain 
wistfulness. “What luck to be able to do all this in 
a place like that.” 

“I’ll write you all the shocking and attractive de¬ 
tails. Letters long and probably boring.” 

“Not boring,” she smiled. “I shall look for those 
letters. Only letters aren’t quite the same.” 

“But you must come down and see it all. It’s not 
impossibly far for a day trip. Get Edwin to bring 
you.” 

“Yes,” she said in a flat tone, “we might do that.” 

“And what about your holidays?” 

90 


SIMPLES 


“A long time away,” she smiled. 

“Only months. Why, I shan’t have the place 
really shipshape before you come. But are you 
going there this year?” 

“Thereabouts. Iamouth.” 

“Five miles away, you’ll be able to come to lunch 
and tea every day that you feel bored with yourself. 
You can just sit on the veranda and browse on the 
sea and the cap. And if you need greater spiritual 
activity, I’ll reserve old Moap and his dog Moreover 
for your more arid occasions.” 

“I’m certain there wouldn’t be any.” 

“I don’t believe there would,” he laughed. “I 
don’t see any coming in the next few months. There’s 
so much to do, and when I’m not doing it, there’s so 
much to see. I haven’t begun to explore the district 
yet. There’s an old house by the river, for instance, 
where, faith being strong and patience long, one can 
on appropriate nights hear ‘Egyptian’—which I 
rather fancy means Phoenician—seamen call the 
lead as their ships oar up the Estuary. I’ve local 
word for that, and it is up to me to prove it.” 

iv 

In the delightful talk of all that was going to 
happen at Moap’s Farm it became plain to Gilda that 
Alban was not leaving Earlhampton for good. 

“Oh, no,” he told her in answer to a question. 
“This is only a side-issue, you know—an attractive 
one, but, as I told you before, my real work is at the 


SIMPLES 


Factory. Pm keen on that, and it is what Kents must 
do, too, unless they have special vocations which lead 
them to branch out in separate callings, like Rosa¬ 
mund’s art, or Dunstan’s engineering.” 

“You don’t regard this as a separate business?” 

“Heavens, no. Don’t even whisper it. It would 
imperil my future at the Factory. I wouldn’t touch 
it if I thought it would be regarded in any light but 
as a feeder to Kent Drugs. You see, that would cut 
me off from my partnership, and apart from the fact 
that the Farm isn’t a Big Money proposition, I 
couldn’t bear to risk losing my interest in the 
Factory.” 

“But—but aren’t you a partner in Kent Drugs al¬ 
ready?” asked Gilda, surprised. “You talk of it as 
though it were to come in the future. I thought it 
was yours already.” 

Her palpable surprise would have taken Mrs. 
Kent aback, since she had hinted that it was Edwin’s 
partnership that kept Gilda bound to him against 
whatever charms Alban, the non-partner, exerted. 
Alban’s face clouded. He did not often think of the 
partnership. He left that to time and the fairness 
of his mother and brother, so certain was he that it 
must come to him in the natural course of events. 
There were, however, moments when the delay 
chilled his optimism. It was not a very great cloud, 
however, for though he was aware of something of 
the reason for the delay, he could not conceive his 
mother and brother capable of doing anything but the 
92 


SIMPLES 


right, the just, the inevitable thing in the end. For 
this reason he made excuses for them. 

He told Gilda that he wasn’t a partner yet— 
officially, but that was because he had not yet become 
a whole-time member of the staff. His chemistry 
course and his preoccupation with the Farm had kept 
him away from the office to a certain extent, and noth¬ 
ing really could be done until he had reorganised the 
herb farm and had taken up a definite position at the 
Factory. 

But he did make Gilda definitely aware that he ex¬ 
pected a partnership one day, and that he had no in¬ 
tention of letting even this matter of the Farm inter¬ 
fere with that ambition. 


v 

Presently she changed the subject: “I shall miss 
you a great deal, Alban. That was why I was so 
startled when you sprang your news.” 

Alban was silent. He had felt all along that she 
wanted to explain the dismay he tried to convince 
himself he had not seen in her face. And he felt 
there was a deeper reason than he pretended behind 
it. 

“I was rather stupid to blurt it out like that, 
Gilda,” he said. “I was thinking entirely of myself.” 

“And perhaps I was thinking entirely of myself, 
too,” she said. “We’ve'been such good friends, 
Alban.” 

“We are , Gilda,” he corrected. 

93 


SIMPLES 


“Yes, we are,” she smiled. “You’re such a splendid 
chum. I’ve always been able to talk straight to you. 
And—and if I do it now, you won’t . . . won’t 

“What is it, Gilda?” 

“It’s quite the hardest thing to be simple about,” 
she said, looking at him with anxiety. “I do want 
you to feel that it’s because I’m anxious, really 
anxious, that I speak of it at all.” 

Alban stared at the view beneath them, the goblin 
vista of a goblin town now misted in the faint, smoky- 
pink light of evening. 

“All right,” he said quietly. “I think I under¬ 
stand—is it about Edwin?” 

“Oh, Alban,” she cried with her heart in her voice, 
“have I—do you think I have offended Edwin?” 

“Not you ... I don’t think you could . . . 
But why do you think it?” 

“It’s a feeling rather than anything definite. Some¬ 
how, he seems—different. It may be me, I don’t 
know. But I do feel that his attitude is a little 
strange.” 

“You mean his jokes, his teasing?” asked Alban, 
with a blush, for he was part of that teasing. 

“That is part of it.” 

“I don’t think that means anything,” said Alban, 
slowly. “Edwin likes to—to josh people. Always 
has. If he finds people are easily drawn, as I always 
can be, it amuses him to tease them.” 

“Yes, I tell myself that,” she said, feeling for 

94 


SIMPLES 


words. “But sometimes it seems more than that. It 
seems as if his attitude towards me had altered.” 

“In what way exactly?” 

“He seems off-hand. He doesn’t seem to be so 
thoughtful. He seems brusque.” She wrung her 
hands, staring out over the town with eyes of pain. 
“It’s hard to say it. I feel so underhand. And I 
wouldn’t speak to anyone, only—only I do want 
help. You see, it seems to me that at moments he is 
quite a different man to the one I—I knew, and I 
don’t know how to—to meet him. It seems as though 
I have to—to reorganise myself, to adapt myself to 
a new man.” 

Alban was chilled and at loss. He told himself 
with a feeling of sickness: “She doesn’t know a thing 
about him outside the attitude he adopts towards her. 
When he drops that attitude and shows the real man 
she’s at sea. She can’t realise what he is, or what his 
past is, or the essentials of a nature that made that 
past. She’s simply and utterly innocent.” 

He was appalled. For the first time the real hor¬ 
ror of this clean, fastidious, innocent creature linking 
herself blindly to a man who was emphatically none 
of these things, who was in fact the horrible opposite, 
came home to him. It was the blindness of her act 
that disturbed him. “It isn’t fair,” he told himself. 
“It’s monstrous. She ought to know the truth so that 
she could judge for herself whether such a marriage 
was worth risking. She ought to know.” 

She mistook his silence. 

“I know it’s beastly of me, Alban,” she cried. “Or 

95 


SIMPLES 


rather it seems beastly—it isn’t really. It’s because 
I don’t want to hurt and annoy Edwin, even uncon¬ 
sciously, as I feel I do now, that I want to know all 
about him. A girl must understand a man completely 
if she is to be a good wife to him. I want to be 
worthy of Edwin.” 

Worthy of Edwin! He stared, almost stupefied. 
Yes, she meant it, she was serious— the tragedy of it! 
This little saint wanted to be worthy of Edwin—the 
thing would have been droll if it had not been so 
hideously tragic. How could one deal with her 
appalling innocence? 

Again she misconstrued his silence. She cried with 
cheeks very pink: “Don’t think ill of me, Alban. I 
know talking like this is strange, but you are the only 
one I can talk to—and I do so want to prevent spoil¬ 
ing things with my blundering inexperience.” 

“You won’t do that,” said Alban, trying to pull his 
wits together. 

“Not in the main thing,” she cried with a brave 
smile. “Nothing can alter the big thing that is be¬ 
tween Edwin and me. That’s rock-bottom and solid, 
but the little things in which foolish inexperience 
causes mistakes and misunderstandings, they’re the 
sort of thing I want to guard against.” 

Alban had nothing to say. He could only tell 
himself that she was tremendously in love with 
Edwin. And Edwin . . . 

He blurted out before he could guard his tongue: 

“You’re tremendously in love with him, Gilda?” 

96 


SIMPLES 


And she answered quite simply: “Yes, quite tre¬ 
mendously.” 

“And Edwin—?” He had to ask that, having 
asked the other. Much depended on her answer. He 
expected at least some hesitation, some doubt, about 
her answer. Her certitude was final. 

“Edwin is the same,” she said with the simplicity 
of complete conviction. “More than me, I think 
. . . I think, even, I’m cold beside him. If—If 
he didn’t love me, I think it would explain things. So 
it must be my stupidity, the little things. Is—tell 
me frankly, Alban—is Edwin touchy?” 

“Touchy!” gasped Alban, for that was the last 
thing Edwin was. 

“I mean—does he take offence easily?” 

“I should say absolutely not.” 

“I think so, too. But perhaps even you and I don’t 
really know.” 

“Have you a definite reason for asking?” 

“This sort of thing”—she said slowly—“and do 
believe I’m not being petulant, only trying to get 
things straight ... We agreed to spend last Sun¬ 
day in the Forest, picnicking. We fixed that when 
we saw each other on Friday, but on Saturday I got 
a note—it hurt a little—bluntly putting me off. That 
has happened rather frequently lately, and it’s worry¬ 
ing me. It’s the thing that makes me wonder if I 
have offended him in some way.” 

“Can you think of anything?” 

“No, that’s the worry of it.” 

“No quarrel?” 


97 


SIMPLES 


“We’ve never quarrelled, Alban.” 

“No—no difference of opinion?” 

She thought and suddenly the colour, vivid and 
burning, spread over her neck and face. But she 
looked steadily enough at Alban, and said evenly: 
“No, no difference of opinion that would explain. 
We had a tiny passage of arms—not an unfriendly 
one. It was about what—what he called my frigid¬ 
ity. But—but it couldn’t have been that. I saw him 
on Monday, and he was the same as ever, not huffy 
even.” 

“What did he say about Sunday?” began Alban, 
and suddenly his eyes widened. “Why, last Sunday, 
he . . .” He stopped abruptly and said again. 

“What had he to say about Sunday?” 

He had reason to be startled. Edwin had been 
away from home all last Sunday, and the reason 
he gave for it was that he had spent the day in 
the Forest—with Gilda! He wondered what had 
been behind Edwin’s lie, and was rather afraid to 
guess. 

He heard Gilda saying: “He said he had remem¬ 
bered an engagement he couldn’t possibly give up. 
He was very sorry.” 

“Did he say what it was?” 

“Yes, he had to see a man named Lang at Rood.” 

Alban was more perplexed. There was a customer 
of Kent Drugs named Lang at Rood, and he was a 
particular friend of Edwin’s. If Lang had fixed up 
an engagement with him, then he might think it 
important enough to put Gilda off. And yet if Edwin 
98 


SIMPLES 


had lied about a day spent with Gilda, he might be 
lying about his engagement with Lang. 

Alban did not like it. It looked fishy. It looked 
as if Edwin was up to his old games. And Gilda 
was ignorant of those habits of his. Appallingly in¬ 
nocent. She ought to be told, or at least given a 
hint. 

He said as guardedly as he could: “Edwin is not 
an easy proposition. He’s not quite the same as other 
men. . . .” 

It was difficult to go delicately, to phrase the thing 
innoffensively, so as not to shock or affront her. 

He was surprised and relieved to hear her mur¬ 
mur: “I know. He’s not a bit like other men. His 
individuality, his character is so markedly different.” 

He wondered if Gilda was getting him right. 
There was a note of enthusiasm, of glamour in her 
tone that did not square with Edwin’s markedly 
different character. He must make it plainer. 

“I mean, he’s knocked around a great deal,” he 
said, “seen a good many aspects of life that we—you 
are not likely to see.” 

He stopped. Gilda was nodding at him in smiling 
confirmation, was saying: “I know—I know, that’s 
why I feel so ingenuous, so provincial. I sometimes 
think it’s because I’m so rustic—mentally, you know 
—that it is hard for him to be patient always.” 

Alban could only stare at her. He felt helpless. 
It was impossible to give her a hint of the true 
character of the man she loved. That splendid in¬ 
nocence of hers made her impervious. That 

99 


SIMPLES 


splendid, generous, all-giving, all-worshipping love 
simply twisted anything he had to say into praise 
of Edwin. It wasn’t because she was stupid, it was 
because she was blind with love. 

Impossible to tell her or even to warn her by 
hints. Nothing but plain, downright, ugly facts 
about Edwin would touch her—and perhaps not 
even those. And plain facts—Alban was without 
plain facts. It wouldn’t be fair to drag in Edwin’s 
past—that was over and finished with, he believed. 
These rumours of the Brackenhurst widow, the Mrs. 
Hogarth Aunt Heppie had spoken of, then? No, 
one could not defame a man on a rumour. 

He felt miserable. He felt like a man on the 
brink of something ugly, and that things, after all, 
weren’t right between Gilda and Edwin. He felt 
that he had failed in his duty towards her somehow. 

vi 

Rosamund said to him over the top of her 
drawing-board: “You’ve been with Gilda? You’ve 
spent the whole of the afternoon with her?” The 
sharp dark eyes in the young pointed face flashed 
incredulity. 

“Why not?” asked Alban, surprised by her 
vehemence. 

“Oh,” snapped his younger sister, her eyes nar¬ 
rowed and examining him closely, “was she miser¬ 
able?” 

“Does it follow?” he smiled. 


IOO 


SIMPLES 


“Was she?” 

“She was a little hipped—at first.” 

Rosamund’s dark eyes went black, shining with 
anger. 

“The beast,” she snapped, “the beast!” 

“Who?” demanded the astonished Alban. 

“You know well enough. Edwin! ” 

He frowned, but recalling Gilda’s dejection about 
Edwin, said: “I’m not understanding this, quite, 
Rosamund.” 

“You’ve been away . . . else you’d have noted 
that it was becoming a sort of habit of his.” Her 
keen eyes saw he didn’t understand yet. “Gilda was 
hippy because she was to meet Edwin this afternoon, 
and he’s put her off—again.” 

“How do you know?” 

“She put me off because of Edwin.” 

“But why should he put her off—again?” 

“Search me,” said Rosamund, scornfully. 

“Brackenhurst as usual, I suppose.” 

“That means Mrs. Hogarth, I take it?” 

“You’ve taken it.” 

“And—what does Mrs. Hogarth mean, Rosa¬ 
mund?” 

“I don’t know,” she said calmly. “I’m not sup¬ 
posed to know in any case. Too young. Also I 
don’t try. Drawing and painting are enough occu¬ 
pation for me.” 

“But you know it is through this Mrs. Hogarth 
that Gilda is miserable.” 

“Sure. And I think Edwin a beast.” 


IOI 


SIMPLES 


“But what is Mrs. Hogarth to Edwin?” 

“That’s an indelicate question to put to one of 
my years, Alban. I know nothing—don’t care. I 
understand she is flashy, vulgar, and rich. I sup¬ 
pose she has the fleshly charm irresistible to the 
Edwins of this world.” 

“Rosamund!” 

“There you are. Plain facts from my pretty 
youth shock you. You think me too young to know 
a spade to be a spade.” 

“It wasn’t that. It was the mention of her when 
. . . Well, hang it, Edwin’s supposed to be in love 
with Gilda.” 

“Is, Alban— is” 

“But how can he be—while there’s this Mrs. 
Hogarth on his mind?” 

“My subject’s art, not anthropology nor the 
psychology of the male. All I know is that Mrs. 
Hogarth or no Mrs. Hogarth Edwin is—as yet— 
in love with Gilda. As she is with him.” 

“It’s infamous,” said Alban, sitting down. 

“Whatever’s the word, there it is,” said Rosamund, 
who, like Alban, was markedly non-Kent. “Call it 
the dual nature of man, the Mormon instinct in 
the male, Sacred and Profane love, or the difference 
between the wife and—well, the other thing. But 
there it is. Gilda seems to be the wife Edwin wants 
—at present. Mrs. Hogarth is, perhaps, the other 
thing.” 

“Why do you keep on saying things like—‘at 
present’?” 


102 


SIMPLES 


“Because endurance is not the habit of the 
Edwins.” 

“And what do you mean by that?” 

Rosamund looked at him with cool, searching, 
acute and mischievous eyes. 

“Oh, I don’t know. One always expects lads like 
Edwin to grow cloyed after conquest—even though 
he’s now got what he considers the promise of the 
loveliest and most distinguished wife in Earlhamp- 
ton. The chase is the thing with his sort.” 

“You seem to know a great deal about men,” 
said Alban, remembering he ought to be surprised 
at her. 

“One doesn’t have to know a great number of 
men to know all about man,” she grinned, “And 
Edwin is a fairly simple, primitive animal, anyhow.” 

As Alban started upright in protest at what he 
thought her coarse cynicism, she said calmly: “Don’t 
be wet, Alban. I live in the same world as you do, 
with the same number of eyes and ears for gathering 
knowledge. What’s the good of pretending that I 
don’t know what I know.” 

“All right,” said Alban. He frowned. “Do you 
think he’s linked in any serious way with this 
widow?” 

“I don’t know anything about the woman,” said 
his kid sister, coolly. “I don’t know whether she is 
a right-’un or a wrong-’un, or merely good company 
for a gloomy day. I recognise she’s of the type 
Edwin has always found most amusing. But beyond 
that. . .” She suddenly measured Alban with her 
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pencil. “That’s a good pose, Alban. Can you hold 
it?” 

“No, I can’t” he snapped, and getting to his feet 
made for the door. At the door: “And I suppose 
Gilda knows nothing?” 

“Absolutely not a thing,” said Rosamund, already 
back at her drawing. 

“Sure?” 

“More than.” Rosamund paused in her stroke. 
“How should she? Though Edwin feels like a public 
sore to us, he’s really no more than a private skeleton. 
Surprise you how few people know the inner reality 
of Edwin.” 

“She ought to know,” burst out Alban. 

Rosamund looked up, measuring him. She knew 
what explosive, headlong stuff he was. 

“Who? Gilda?” 

“You know I mean Gilda. And you know she 
has a right to know.” 

Rosamund considered this. “Maybe you’re right,” 
she said. 

“You see it plainly.” 

“Ye—es. Only—only I haven’t that bulge 
developed so highly as you, old thing. Theoretically 
I see it—but me for a quiet life and drawing.” 

“I think she ought to be told before it is too 
late.” 

“I wonder,” said Rosamund, leaning pointed chin 
on wrist. “Would it do any good? She’s in love 
with him tremendously. She wouldn’t believe, 
perhaps would refuse to believe, or if she did, she 
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SIMPLES 


would still go on. And then later it’d start to work 
outward from the inside. After marriage, you 
understand. It might smash the marriage before 
it got its chance, because she was suspicious, dis¬ 
trustful, because she imagined horrible things into 
simple actions. It’s dangerous to tell, I think, 
especially with Gilda in her present state.” 


105 


Qhapter V 


i 

O SWALD in his office was saying: “Look here, 
you’ll have to stop it. It’s getting beyond my 
patience, your mother’s patience. Understand, 
you’ve got to pull yourself up.” 

Alban could not hear the words of the answer, 
but he knew it was Edwin’s voice, the perky, slippery 
voice that could be so enraging. It had a note half- 
impertinent, half-frightened. Impertinence was in 
the ascendency, for Oswald barked out: 

“You needn’t lie to me. I know where you were 
yesterday, just as I know where you were Sunday. 
I won’t have any more of it. You’re mother won’t. 
You’re shirking your work. You’re absolutely un¬ 
reliable in business—as Well as in other things. 
You aren’t worth the money we pay you. No, you’re 
not, not worth a quarter of the money we pay you. 
That’s bad enough. The other thing is worse.” 

Again the perky, slippery voice, fear coming to 
the top now. Again Oswald, barking: 

“None of that darn lying. I know where you 
were. I know.” 

The slippery voice had a squeak in it. 

“Will you deny right out now that you were 
at Brackenhurst yesterday and on Sunday, when 
io 6 


SIMPLES 


you said you were with Gilda? Be careful now—I 
know.” 

Pause. 

“Well, do you deny it?” 

Pause. 

“Thought better of it, eh? Just as well. Do you 
deny that you visited this Mrs. Hogarth, and stayed 
with her the whole time both days?” 

The slippery voice jerked a feeble sentence. 

“Called on her!” Oswald’s scorn was immense. 
“Called on her! You spent the whole of each day 
with her. Do you deny it?” 

Pause. 

“You don’t, you can’t. Well, then, I tell you 
finally—finally, you understand—that it’s got to 
be put an end to. It’s got to stop now. I won’t have 
it. Your mother won’t have it.” The slippery voice 
said something. “Never mind if there’s nothing in it, 
it’s got to stop. You’re engaged to a decent girl, 
a sweet girl, and your mother and I are not going 
to put up with any more of your tricks. It stops 
now or there’ll be serious trouble for you, Edwin. 
No, I won’t argue about it. I mean what I say. 
Serious trouble. . .” 

ii 

Alban, finishing off his work in the outer office, 
waiting for the moment when he should go in and 
have his final talk with Oswald before setting out 
for Moap’s Farm, listened with a cold sickness. He 
had spent a vile night, tossing sleepless and going 
107 


SIMPLES 


over and over the whole bad business of Edwin’s 
engagement. 

Now he was urgently swayed towards insisting 
that Gilda be told all about his brother. Now, with 
equal urgency, came the doubt as to its wisdom. 
Rosamund’s cool, speculative words came to him. 
To tell Gilda might lead to more harm than good. 

Over and over again he had turned the matter 
over in his mind, and had risen exhausted and in a 
curious limp and negative mood in consequence. 
That mood had helped him to see Rosamund’s line 
of argument better. He had, all through the morn¬ 
ing, been strengthening the conclusion that it was 
best, safest, and fairest that Gilda should not know. 

Starting out with the idea that he might settle 
his mind by having a straight talk with Oswald, he 
had, by the time he was ready to go into Oswald, 
come to the conclusion that there was no need to 
say anything. 

But hearing Oswald talk to Edwin had changed 
all that in a flash. With every accusation of lying 
he heard, with every implication that this was not 
the first occasion that Edwin had been warned 
against visiting Mrs. Hogarth, he had seen that 
Edwin was unchanging; that no threats, no promises 
of amendment from Edwin, no love of a good 
woman would ever change his brother. 

He was unalterable in his habits, and Gilda did 
not know. 

Gilda ought to know. It was only justice that 
Gilda should be told. 

108 


SIMPLES 


iii 

“Hallo, Alban,” said Oswald, looking up through 
his bushy eyebrows. “Cleared everything up? Ready 
to go?” 

Alban drew up a chair, sat down squarely and 
quietly. He meant to be quiet—and square, too— 
through all that was going to happen. 

“I heard you talking to Edwin just now,” he 
said. “I want to talk to you about Edwin.” 

Oswald stiffened, hands out on desk, eyes fixed 
on blotting pad. He did not say anything. Alban 
had hoped for an opening, to give him his cue for 
a calm, judicial statement. The silence made him 
feel clumsy, blurty. 

He said, still fighting to be even, calm: “From 
what you said to Edwin, I gather he is behaving 
as he always behaved. That he doesn’t change—- 
ever. Won’t—can’t, perhaps. Well, what I want 
to say is, how does that affect Gilda?” 

He paused. Oswald had no intention of helping 
him, but the pause was so long that he had to say: 

“How does what affect Gilda, Alban?” 

Alban wanted to blaze out—wanted to shout, 
“Why beat about the bush? Why pretend? But 
he said to himself, “You must keep cool about this, 
remain balanced.” 

He answered with reasonable evenness: “I mean 
the fact that Edwin is untrustworthy, and is engaged 
to a girl who imagines him trustworthy.” 

109 


SIMPLES 


“I really don’t follow you,” said Oswald. “What’s 
it all about? Where do you come in?” 

“Well, I’m his brother.” 

“So am I. But I don’t see what meaning even 
that has.” 

Alban pressed his fingers hard on the desk, as 
though pushing down impatience. 

“Let’s have it squarely,” he said. “I’m saying, 
I don’t think it right for Gilda to go on with this 
engagement without knowing exactly what sort of 
man she is going to marry.” 

Oswald sat back with a jerk. He gaped with 
genuine astonishment. 

“ ’Pon my honour, Alban, you are the most 
amazing chap I’ve ever come across.” 

“But why? Surely the matter is plain enough?” 
said Alban, finding it hard to keep calm. “I’m 
merely suggesting something just decently honour¬ 
able.” 

The movement of Oswald’s hands said, “Well, 
I’m in for it, I suppose.” He said curtly: “Well, 
then, what exactly and plainly are you suggesting?” 

“I am suggesting that Gilda be told what manner 
of man Edwin is—what his character is, what his 
habits are j what his past life has been.” 

Oswald began to get extraordinarily red, he began 
to goggle. He was looking at Alban as though he 
had been confronted with a new, unique, and start¬ 
ling kind of snake. He cried, “Good God!” then, 
with a hopeless gesture, “Are you mad—or what?” 

Alban, startlingly pale, but with a curious shining 

no 


SIMPLES 


under the pallor, which also got into his eyes—his 
“pig-headed” look, Oswald said—leaned forward. 
He said evenly: 

“You know exactly what I mean. You know what 
Edwin is—as a man. He’s unstable, unreliable— 
and vicious.” 

Oswald bumped forward in his swing-chair with 
such violence that he had to put his hand on the 
desk to save himself from falling onto it. 

“Vicious!” he almost shouted. “Vicious!” 

“You know he is,” said Alban. “You know his 
past—and what he’s doing now.” 

“Vicious!” gasped Oswald again. “You want me 
to tell this girl, a stranger, that I consider my own 
brother—vicious?” 

“Yes, you or Mother ought to tell her.” 

“Mother!” said Oswald, as though stung. “Don’t 
be indecent.” He peered into Alban’s face, entirely 
at a loss to understand. “What is wrong with you? 
Are you really a bit touched, or are you lacking all 
shame and decency?” 

Alban retorted in a hard voice, “Is a man mad or 
shameless because he points out your responsibility?” 

“Responsibility! Don’t you realize that you are 
talking about my brother—your brother?” 

“That,” said Alban, deliberately, “is the respon¬ 
sibility. Don’t you see it is because he is our brother 
that we have that responsibility? ... No, let me 
say what I mean, Oswald. This is a matter, not of 
family ties, but of decency, of right. We, and ap¬ 
parently we alone, know what Edwin is. Unless we 
hi 


SIMPLES 


tell this innocent girl, this clean and trusting girl, 
she will go blindly into a marriage with a man who 
is not trustworthy, who is not clean, and, from the 
way he goes on, shows that he never will be. Can’t 
you see that in letting that girl go blindfolded into 
this we are not doing the straight thing? We are 
letting her marry with false ideas that may lead to 
tragedy, to ruin of her life.” 

“All I can see,” said Oswald, with a snap, “is 
that you are asking me to betray my own brother.” 

“No, I’m asking that you should prevent his be¬ 
traying an unsuspecting girl. We can’t help our¬ 
selves about Edwin. Good Lord, don’t you think 
I’m sick enough that it is my own brother I’m talking 
about? I hate it. The thought of what he has put 
upon us, as decent people, makes me ill—ill. I don’t 
want to have to give ourselves away like this—don’t 
you see that? It’s only because we have no right to 
keep Gilda in the dark about such important mat¬ 
ters, that we, as Edwin’s brothers, must tell the 
truth.” 

Oswald was too upset to follow his reasoning. He 
could only gasp: “Vilify my own brother! Mon¬ 
strous!” 

Alban’s lips opened, then shut in a tight, firm 
line, his hands grasped the desk hard. He said with 
unexpected quietness: “Look at it from another 
point of view then, Oswald. Say the girl in ques¬ 
tion was one of our sisters—Ethelfleda or Rosa¬ 
mund. What would we say to a family that allowed 
either of them to marry a brother or son whom they 
112 


SIMPLES 


knew to be constitutionally unfaithful, whose life 
was unclean and unreliable? Should we like one 
of our sisters to be linked for life with a man of 
that type? What should we think of a family that 
wouldn’t speak?” 

“They wouldn’t speak,” cried Oswald. “You 
couldn’t expect it of anybody. They wouldn’t tell 
us.” 

Alban’s fist thumped the desk. 

“That’s not the point,” he cried irritably. “The 
point is that we should feel and know that they had 
betrayed our sister. You know we should think their 
action foul. We should think that they had ruined 
our sister’s happiness, perhaps her life, and the lives 
of her children. We should be filled with anger and 
horror that a clean, innocent girl like one of our 
sisters should be linked to, polluted by an unclean 
man, a bad-living man, a beastly-minded man. You 
know what our rage would be, what our disgust 
would be. We’d hold the relatives who kept silent 
when they should have spoken responsible.” 

“You’re talking rubbish. You’re talking in a stupid 
and exaggerated way. Polluting, unclean, bad-living 
—and about your own brother! You’ve taken leave 
of your senses. You’re—you’re repulsive.” 

“Would you,” said Alban, deliberately, absolutely 
ignoring his brother’s indignation, “would you, 
would Mother allow Ethelfleda or Rosamund to 
marry young Evan Champman?” 

“Don’t be disgusting,” snapped Oswald. “You 
know what Champman is. Everybody does. To 
ii3 


SIMPLES 


mention him in the same breath as your brother— 
it’s vile.” 

“Is it? We know about young Champman be¬ 
cause he figured in the Courts in one maternity case 
—one only! Is that record as bad as Edwin’s?” 

“Disgusting!” cried Oswald. “I’ve had enough 
of this. I won’t stand . . .” 

“Is it?” snapped Alban, his eyes suddenly blazing. 
“Don’t run away from truth, man. Is his record 
as bad as Edwin’s—yes or no?” 

“But everybody knows about that young swine—” 
Oswald caught the contempt blazing in his brother’s 
eyes. “We don’t know what they hushed up. For 
all we know there were others . . .” 

“That’s what I’m getting at—the crime of hiding 
these facts. The one public matter is enough for us 
in Champman’s case. We know the man, and we’d 
rather see our sister dead than linked to such a man. 
Isn’t that so? Again—would you, would Mother, 
dream of allowing our sisters to marry him?” 

Oswald glowered across the desk. He was 
furiously, deeply angry with Alban. He could have 
slashed him across the face with his ruler, but he 
had no answer. He could not answer. He knew he 
would rather see his sisters dead than married to a 
dirty little beast like this Champman fellow. But 
he felt, in some obscure way, that Edwin’s case was 
entirely different. Why it should be, he did not 
know, but he felt it was. 

“You don’t answer,” went on Alban. “You can’t 
answer. You know yourself that the mere thought 
of one of our girls marrying young Champman is 

114 


SIMPLES 


unspeakable. And yet you can’t see that that is the 
very reason why I feel that Gilda should learn the 
truth about Edwin.” 

Oswald sat glowering, his anger mounting to 
hate of his brother, his mind searching for some 
means to teach the young cub a lesson, to overthrow 
him, to turn the tables on him—to hurt him. He 
said nothing. After a moment Alban said: “The 
only difference is that everybody knows about 
Champman, but only we know about Edwin. That 
makes our responsibility greater . . 

Oswald suddenly saw his way. 

“How do you know that Gilda doesn’t know? A 
good many people do.” 

“I know she doesn’t.” 

“You seem pretty certain,” Oswald was suddenly 
cool, sardonic, triumphant. He saw his way to score 
—he saw his way to hurt and silence this damned, 
impudent young cub. 

“I do know that,” said Alban, unsuspecting. “I 
know she doesn’t know.” 

“You seem to know a great deal about her, seem 
to be pretty intimate with her.” Oswald’s tone was 
a direct sneer. Alban suddenly realised the new 
direction of the talk. He reddened. 

“What the devil do you mean?” he cried. 

“Well, is this advocacy all that it seems? Or is 
there perhaps a motive of your own about this— 
this telling on Edwin, this anxiety to blacken Edwin 
in the girl’s eyes?” 

Alban was thunderstruck. He glared at his 

ii 5 


SIMPLES 


brother. For a moment he couldn’t believe that the 
words had the meaning he had read into them. 
Oswald could not be so vile. Then the sneer forced 
home the truth. He sprang up, and he flung his long 
body half across the table to get at Oswald. And 
Oswald jerked back. He did it in fear, and as he 
did so, he snatched at an ebony ruler. For the 
emotion he saw in Alban’s blazing eyes was very 
close to murder. 

Alban was beside himself. Oswald’s accusation 
seemed to him hellish. Oswald was hinting what 
Aunt Heppie had said outright—that and worse. 
He was hinting that Alban was taking this stand, not 
on the grounds of decent conduct, but because he 
was in love with Gilda—worse, because being in 
love with Gilda he wanted to blacken Edwin’s 
character in the hope of getting Gilda for himself. 
That’s what he meant, the cad, the mean-hearted 
swine. 

His face blazed fury and his long arm swung 
back. “You cad,” he shouted, “you unspeakable 
cad.” 

“Sit down,” roared Oswald, holding the ruler at 
the ready, “sit down, you fool, or I’ll swipe you in 
the face with this.” 

But he didn’t risk waiting. He got up, his chair 
falling with a clatter, and backed out of reach. Even 
then he stood, ruler ready, on guard against Alban. 

Alban had not attempted to come round the desk 
at him. He stood leaning over it, his eyes like a 
tiger’s, and anger and contempt shone in his face. 
ii 6 


SIMPLES 


After the first blaze of rage he was almost sick 
with disgust that Oswald should even play with such 
an idea. And gradually, from the feeling that he 
had discovered unsuspected depths of beastliness in 
Oswald, he became overwhelmed with the hopeless¬ 
ness of arguing with a man who could use such 
weapons. He could never make Oswald see—never! 
Oswald would think it was all because he was in love 
with Gilda. And—and perhaps he wasn’t wrong. 

His emotions, slipping back like a swift tide, went 
right out of him. He felt limp, sick, tired of the 
whole thing. Like many vehement natures, he was 
a prey to acute reactions. The reaction of hopeless¬ 
ness swept over him now. Yes, he was in love with 
Gilda, no good pretending that he wasn’t. He al¬ 
ways had been, though he had not always known it. 
He was in love with her. Aunt Heppie had seen it. 
Oswald saw it. No doubt his mother and the rest 
of them saw it. He was in love with her. And he 
wanted to protect her because he loved her. 

There was no harm in that, there was no harm in 
loving her. It was a clean thing—reverent, any¬ 
how. No harm at all—yet, how difficult it made 
things. It handicapped him with Oswald and the 
rest. It even handicapped him with Gilda. He 
couldn’t tell her about Edwin because he loved her. 
To do it would be indecent. He couldn’t do it. He 
couldn’t bring himself to do it. If he hadn’t loved 
her he would have, because it was the thing to do. 
Loving her did not blind him to the duty of telling 
her. If he had hated her, he would have seen that 
117 


SIMPLES 


she ought to be told. But loving her . . . He 

was in the wrong all round. 

He sank back into his chair, staring blind and bereft 
at the desk. Oswald had spiked his guns. Oswald 
had made the whole thing impossible, intolerable, 
vile. He couldn’t make Oswald see the right thing to 
do—and he could see the right thing and couldn’t 
do it. He felt like a lost soul. 

And Oswald knew he had thrust home, made a 
stroke that left his brother numb. He knew he had 
scored, and he experienced a joy he rarely obtained 
in clashes with this difficult brother of his. He was 
asserting his position as eldest brother, the patriarch 
of the family. The triumph gave him power. The 
exhilaration cleared the woolliness from his mind. 
He attacked with assurance. 

“It’s no good your jumping up and glaring like 
that. It’s just silly. Calling me a cad . . . Why, 
you’re just a fool. I was only pointing out that you 
were looking at this with a strong prejudice in favour 
of Gilda?” 

“Was that all you meant?” said Alban, with con¬ 
tempt. 

Having got on top of the discussion, Oswald was 
not going to lose his mastery for such a little matter 
as scrupulousness. 

“It was,” he said firmly. And he improved his 
position by a little hypocrisy. “I understand your 
attitude with regard to Gilda, and honour it—up 
to a point.” 


118 


SIMPLES 


“You can’t regulate honour up to definite points,” 
said Alban. 

“Hadn’t you better let me have my say instead 
of trying to split hairs?” said Oswald, with dignity 
and almost with genius, for Alban felt that he had 
been merely scoring a point. Oswald’s rebuke was 
the kind to react on a nature like his at once. It 
called on his instinct to be fair. 

Oswald saw that he had scored again, and that 
gave him power. He went on: “You are looking at 
this from one point of view, the girl’s point of view. 
And I quite frankly admit that there is a great deal 
in what you say. But there is another point of view, 
Edwin’s. You don’t seem to have looked at that. 
Well, I have to. As—as the head of the family I 
have to look at all sides . . .” 

“But Edwin . . 

“No, let me have my say out. There’s Edwin’s 
side, our side. What about Edwin, what about 
Edwin’s future? I know what you are going to say. 
He’s been racketty—wild—bad-living, if you like, in 
the past. But is that any reason why we should smash 
his future? Edwin’s marriage is, I think, your 
mother thinks, Edwin’s chance. Marriage will steady 
him, as it does so many others.” 

“But that’s—that’s gambling with Gilda’s happi¬ 
ness for the sake of Edwin,” cried Alban. “How do 
you know he’s going to settle down? His past’s all 
against it.” 

“How is it so many other young men have settled 
down, become good, decent, fine husbands after 

119 


SIMPLES 


marriage? No, do wait a minute . . . Look at 
the thing squarely, Alban. Don’t rush at it in your 
impulsive way. Edwin isn’t the first and only 
racketty young man the world has known. You and 
I are not blind fools. You know as well as I do 
that it’s no uncommon thing for young fools to sow 
their wild oats. I don’t hold with it—you don’t— 
but there it is. No getting away from it. But do 
those young men make bad husbands? Look at them, 
men of our own time—Diver was a racketty one if 
you like, Munsard, Collins, Heriott . . . All of 
them pretty fast, you’ll admit, and yet you know 
yourself they have settled down, become decent fel¬ 
lows. Marriage has steadied them up.” 

Yes, Alban had to admit that was all true. All 
these were straight fellows now, and they had been 
rips. All the same, as Oswald had felt that Edwin 
was different from Champman, Alban felt that 
Edwin was different from these shining cases. And 
like Oswald he had no reason for his feeling. 

And Oswald saw it: “It’s a fact that gadabout 
young men do settle down into ordinary, decent fel¬ 
lows after marriage. It’s human nature, it seems. 
But say someone had raked up their past, Munsard’s 
for instance, what would have happened? You 
know without being told. Millie Bridges would have 
had nothing more to do with him, the engagement 
would have been broken off, Munsard would not 
have got his chance of pulling himself up and going 
straight, and he’d probably be a rip now and a worse 
rip. Do you see that?” 


120 


SIMPLES 


Alban saw it. It was logical, and yet—and 
yet . . . 

Oswald, with a flash of genius rare in one so 
woolly, went straight on to the next point. 

“You’re thinking that Edwin is different, Alban. 
That’s because you’re looking at it too closely. He 
isn’t. Why should he be? He’s just a human being 
after all like the rest of ’em. He’s no better and no 
worse. I daresay the parents and families of the 
others thought they were different, that there was 
no hope for them. Everybody feels that his sorrow 
and trials are the worst, are exceptional. But they’re 
not. The Edwins of this world are very ordinary 
and everyday.” 

Alban even nodded at that. Ideas always swayed 
him. He saw the power of that one. It appealed to 
him. Convincing stuff. All the same, he said slowly: 

“What about this Mrs. Hogarth then?” 

Oswald said, almost with joy, “Nothing in that, 
take it from me.” 

“But,” persisted Alban, “he is neglecting Gilda for 
her.” 

“To a certain extent, I know,” said Oswald. “But 
emphatically there’s nothing in it. You yourself 
heard me put it to him point-blank just now. There’s 
nothing in it. I know a great deal about Mrs. 
Hogarth. She’s a big, flash woman, with too much 
money and too much leisure. She’s the bold type 
that amuses Edwin. But there’s nothing more in it 
than that. Mrs. Hogarth, as I happen to know, is 
straight.” 

121 


SIMPLES 


“I say nothing against her or any woman,” said 
Alban, stiffly. “It’s Edwin’s attitude that makes me 
anxious. Why does he neglect Gilda for this 
woman?” 

“Well, I’ve spoken to him about that, and that’s 
going to be changed,” said Oswald. “Of course I 
don’t know any of the reasons. Edwin was intimate 
with Mrs. Hogarth before he became engaged to 
Gilda, went to see her much too frequently. Per¬ 
haps it isn’t easy to break off without giving offence. 
But I don’t know anything about it, save that I have 
spoken to him pretty firmly, and there won’t be so 
much, if any of it, in the future.” 

Alban was silent. He had, he felt, nothing more 
to say. Oswald knew this was the time to round off 
his victory: “You see, Alban, others are watching 
Edwin as much as you. I am, your mother is. We’re 
not blind to him. At the same time we do feel that 
Edwin’s future must be safeguarded—as well as 
Gilda’s. We don’t want to spoil his chance of settling 
down. We’ve got to think of him, too, you see.” 

Alban apparently saw. He left for Margaretting 
without opening the subject again. Was he con¬ 
vinced? He didn’t know. It seemed to him that he 
had been baffled, headed off, had had all his guns 
spiked. Oswald had been logical, and perhaps his 
own love for Gilda had made him illogical. Perhaps 
he had been carried away by sentiment. He didn’t 
know. But he did feel uneasy. He did feel that 
everything was not all right, that Edwin was not 
right, and that it would be straighter, fairer to Gilda 
122 


SIMPLES 


to let her know what manner of man Edwin actually 
was. But he did not know. He could only worry. 

iv 

Mrs. Kent said almost before Oswald was through 
with his report of Alban’s attitude, “But, Oswald, 
the boy is really dangerous” 

“Sometimes I think he’s not quite sane,” admitted 
Oswald. 

“Really dangerous,” cried Mrs. Kent. “It’s be¬ 
yond mere waywardness and eccentricity. He really 
is a peril. I can’t understand him. I can’t think of 
it in a son of mine.” 

“I think he gets worse instead of better,” said 
Oswald, sorrowfully, his eyes on the carpet, his will 
trying to prevent his thoughts dwelling on the part¬ 
nership. 

“Yes, he does,” said Mrs. Kent. “To think that 
I should have to suffer like this from one of my own 
children . . . Are you sure he won’t tell Gilda 

himself?” 

“I think not. I got him to see the sensible point of 
view. Besides he’s at Margaretting now for some 
months.” 

“He might write.” 

“No, I don’t think he’s likely to do that.” 

“Perhaps not. I’ll drop a little hint to Gilda about 
the unwisdom of corresponding with the brother of 
her fiance. But I don’t know. She is a difficult girl. 
Very difficult. She has ideas too.” 

123 


SIMPLES 


“She is more Alban’s sort. Why she ever hooked 
on to Edwin, I can’t understand.” 

“Hooked,” said Mrs. Kent, sweetly, “is perhaps 
the best word.” She noted Oswald’s bewildered 
stare. “She’s quick-witted enough, my boy, to realise 
how chary we are about putting a boy of Alban’s dis¬ 
position into a position of—er—responsibility. She 
probably found out in the beginning that he wasn’t 
a partner as Edwin is.” 

“Yes, he does make relying on him difficult,” 
sighed Oswald, thinking how important, attractive, 
and sensible it was that he himself should be prac¬ 
tically in sole command of Kent Drugs. 

“And how about Edwin and this Mrs. Hogarth?” 

“Edwin,” said Oswald, angry at once, “is a con¬ 
founded fool. And if he’s not so pig-headed as 
Alban, he’s as difficult, because he’s utterly untrust¬ 
worthy. I told him plainly what I—we thought 
about that affair. And I got him to promise he’d 
drop going to Brackenhurst. But all the time I had 
the feeling that he was simply lying. He lies in the 
most barefaced way and goes on doing just what he 
likes. You can’t hold him or check him down.” 

“Threaten to stop his salary, threaten even to cut 
him out of the firm,” said Mrs. Kent, majestically. 

“That would throw him right into the arms of 
Mrs. Hogarth, I’m sure,” said Oswald. “She’s very 
well off, and his sort, too, and he has his way with 
her. I can threaten if you like, but I think it 
dangerous.” 


124 


SIMPLES 


“No—no,” said Mrs. Kent, hurriedly. “You 
mustn’t risk that. Whatever else she is, Gilda Con¬ 
roy looks a person of breeding and distinction. I’d 
endure anything to prevent a marriage to that 
horrible, vulgar, peroxided publican woman.” 


125 


Qhapter VI 


i 

B Y July, Alban had done so much on Moap’s 
Farm that it seemed to him to be crying out to 
be seen by someone of the family—and particularly 
by Gilda. 

For months he had been working with the steady 
absorption that means complete happiness. The 
changes he had made in his cultivation grounds were 
not, perhaps, perceptible to the uninitiated eye, for 
though he had enlarged his plantings of commercial 
herbs, he had left much of the land as it was, mean¬ 
ing to develop his improvements slowly. He had, 
for instance, left practically untouched, for his own 
fancy’s sake, and for the sake of showing Gilda when 
she came on her holiday, old Moap’s patch of 
simples. 

His main changes had been about the house. 

He had rooted up old Moap’s lightning-defying 
laurels from the front of the house, and, thanks to 
this and the removal of some lime trees at the fringe 
of his land, he had got his clear view of the ever 
changing sea with the sweep of cliffs lying along it 
like a lover’s arm. He had built a light veranda, 
onto the front of the house, and sitting there he 
could see all the changes of light and colour on sea 
126 


SIMPLES 


and on the cliffs and on the boldest and most austere 
cliff of them all, the Cap. 

And beyond the Cap he could sec Iamouth, where 
Gilda was to spend her holiday. 

But would she spend her holiday there? He was 
vaguely aware that Edwin was making further 
trouble and that he might prevent her spending a 
holiday near Alban. Edwin seemed to have heard 
something about his attempt at intervention and be¬ 
come vindictive. Gilda’s letters, getting fewer and 
thinner through the months, seemed to hint vaguely 
at this. 

Still, if she came, Gilda would like that veranda. 
He had made it practically with his own hands after 
the work-day. He had knocked one of the old, 
stubby house windows into a doorway to open onto it. 
He had a South American hammock ready swinging, 
and a big, deep, well-cushioned seat snug in the corner 
best for views. On a wet day or a cold day there 
were glass screens to slide about one, and one could 
enjoy the view in defiance of pelting rain. 

And the view in rain wasn’t to be despised. The 
grey slatey tints that came over everything gave this 
world of his an air muted and superb. Over the gen¬ 
eral grey lay subtler tints of purple, blue, and smoke- 
grey, while the cliffs stood like hanging cities above 
the mist on the waters. The sea itself was a sym¬ 
phony in sullen blues with the livid white crests 
shining wanly above the surges, or, in tearing 
weather, yellow-blues heaving and leaping with 
127 


SIMPLES 


gestures of wild, flying, frothy arms flashing up and 
trailing the smoke of spume as though loosing to the 
winds the wicked flowers of the storm. 

In all weathers there were quick and moving 
views, and in all lights, from the lemon-yellow 
ecstasy of dawn to the magic, milky world of moon¬ 
light. And on dark nights, away beyond the Cap, 
Iamouth graced the night with its jewels of star¬ 
lights . . . Iamouth, that little speck of Italy 

climbing a steep valley from a blue bay that would 
presently harbour Gilda. 

Before the veranda sloped grass, and then masses 
of flowers exquisite in scent and shape and colour, 
and aromatic shrubs, and what not else; and close 
banks of honey-sweet privet. Cunningly Alban had 
grouped them so that the wind up the valley would 
blow their gay and lively perfumes into his house, 
onto his veranda, and fill it with the very breath of 
loveliness. 

And this was not altogether mere impractical 
beauty, either. Alban, with Bunsen burner, flask and 
Liebig’s condenser, was getting at their volatile oils, 
was experimenting with the pure, deep, and exquisite 
perfumes he distilled, dissolving them in rectified 
spirit, testing them, blending them, perfecting 
them, searching for novel and delicate combinations 
—feeling always for some definitive and beautiful 
and new scent that might capture the market, in the 
fashion that many distinctive Lavender Waters had 
captured it. 


128 


SIMPLES 


ii 

He had performed miracles with the interior of 
the house. It was a house that had started as a large, 
modern, villa-ish cottage, and had been added to 
and added to. It had a number of rooms, but none 
of them big. 

Alban had cut out a lath and plaster party-wall to 
the right of the hall and turned hall and sitting-room 
into a big lounge. The door he had cut into the 
veranda gave greater light than of old. A long 
narrow window knocked into the west wall gave an 
air of actual radiance to a chamber that had once 
been formal, cramped, and stuffy. 

Alban bees-waxed and polished the good stout 
boarding of the floor, distempered the walls orange, 
hung black chintz curtains with a bold, bright bamboo 
pattern at doors and windows, covered a broad settee 
and a couple of deep armchairs with the same fabric, 
and these with a few Dryad cane chairs, a piano 
player, a gate table, and a stretch of low book-cases 
completed his furniture here. A few plain mats were 
on the floor, some vivid and sharp colour prints on 
the walls. 

He had a room full of briskness and light, and 
full of scents and the sea, too, as the soft wind blew 
up the valley. 

Simplicity, sharpness, and colour shone throughout 
the house. And there was also central heating. He 
put in one big furnace to serve his drying shed and 
heat his home. He was comfortable in winter as 
129 


SIMPLES 


well as in summer. Certainly Gilda would like his 
house, like his books, like his selection of music. If 
she ever saw them! 

As the time of her holiday, which was rather her 
father’s holiday, drew near, he began to wonder 
whether she would really come to Iamouth. 

He was getting practically no letters from her 
now. Even the letters he did receive were dismay¬ 
ingly short and barren. They seemed to be savour¬ 
less, they seemed born of an effort. They seemed to 
be written by someone whose mind had grown so 
tired, blank, and stiff that it had nothing to say. 

Alban could hear, “What is there to write about?” 
in every sentence. And that wasn’t like Gilda, not 
the old Gilda. 

Gilda had begun by sending a weekly letter. A 
vivid, sparkling, flashing letter, a stimulating letter 
—the letter of a quick mind vehemently interested 
in and delighted with life, and putting that interest 
and delight on paper with running laughter. Plenty 
to write about in the beginning—but not now. 

Well, perhaps he knew the reason behind that. 
Rosamund had given him his clue. Rosamund, as 
flashing in her own way but completely wayward, 
after he had hinted in several letters that he would 
like to have news of Gilda, had said: 

“If Gilda is not writing to you, the reason is prob¬ 
ably Edwin. Edwin hasn’t put his foot down. Edwin 
never puts his foot down. An abrupt gesture like 
that would spoil his fun. But I shouldn’t be startled 
out of my bobbed hair (just bobbed—I like it for its 
130 


SIMPLES 


charming lack of plaiting and hair pins, and I think I 
look devilish, too. But I do hate people saying 
‘Exactly like Joan of Arc 5 ) to learn that Edwin has 
been making so much capital out of your writing, and 
hers, that she has dropped it. Edwin, you know, 
would rather like to annoy you that way. And I’ll 
tell you plainly, old stick, that in the best, brotherly 
style, Edwin hates you. Shocking! We oughtn’t 
to say such things, of course. It’s unnatural of us. 
But is it? All the hard hates in the world have been 
inter-family hates. So we’ll be modern, clear- 
visioned, and not shocked.” 

Alban was a little shocked, though he felt that 
Rosamund in her bold, modern way was right. He 
could feel, even in Gilda’s letters, that Edwin was 
“getting at him,” that Edwin’s quick wits were 
utilising Gilda to get at him. He seemed to sense 
new strains of meanness and vindictiveness appearing 
in Edwin’s character. He did not doubt Edwin’s 
right to dislike him after what had happened, but this 
underhand attack filled him with sickness and disgust. 
He was even glad Gilda was stopping her letters to 
him, and he decided to stop writing to her, loss 
though that meant, for it would save her from an¬ 
noyance. 

He- strongly resented one part of Rosamund’s 
letter, because it showed that Rosamund, in her hard- 
edged way, was becoming irritated with Gilda. Rosa¬ 
mund protested that she did not understand what was 
coming to an ordinarily sensible human creature like 


SIMPLES 


“She seems to me to be acting like a sheep. She 
seems absolutely under Edwin’s thumb. She seems 
to be afraid even of offending him. It really makes 
me a little sick to see a beautiful, intelligent, respon¬ 
sible being in terror before the slightest whim of a 
lout like Edwin. I loathe human doormats, and 
Gilda is showing a doormat-streak. She seems ready 
to put up with anything —anything rather than make 
him angry. It’s a ghastly change, a terrible change. 
I find I am in physical revolt at seeing a girl of her 
fibre intimidated into doing things she detests all 
from dread of losing him. That’s what it amounts 
to—just plain fear of loss. The mere idea that she 
is losing hold of him reduces her to nerveless help¬ 
lessness. And the brute knows it, and turns the 
thumbscrew . . . Again how wrong of me! Can’t 
you hear Mamma saying, c You’re talking about your 
own brother , Rosamund. How could a daughter of 
mine be so unsisterly?’ But am I really a daughter 
of hers? Sometimes I think I am merely a daugh¬ 
ter of Father’s—just as you are entirely a son of 
Father’s. It must have been his gooseberry bush we 
sprouted from, not Mother’s particular shrub. We’re 
such aliens that I can’t logically admit she had any 
hand in us . . . But this is the sort of thing No 
Young Woman Should Discuss lightly. And it’s not 
about Gilda. And about Gilda—I’m flummuxed. 
All I can say is—if this is what Love does to an 
intelligent human woman, me for unmitigated and 
unceasing spinsterhood.” 

Alban was profoundly disturbed. It was obvious 
132 


SIMPLES 


that Edwin had not changed or improved, that in fact 
he seemed to be on a downgrade of brutality. 
Obvious, too, that things were not at all well between 
him and Gilda. His old fears revived, his old pain 
increased. He felt that someone ought to interfere, 
that Gilda ought to be told about the real Edwin, the 
danger of Edwin. 

A further letter from Rosamund made the 
puzzle more difficult. It was an answer to anxious 
questions on his side: 

“ . . . All I can say is that they are engaged 

definitely and apparently unfracturably, and that 
they progress by regularised steps to marriage at the 
altar,” Rosamund wrote. “I don’t pretend a brain 
like mine can grasp it. But there it is. Edwin is— 
well, Edwin. I think he has made his visits to 
Brackenhurst a regular habit, but he keeps them 
deadly dark. Oswald foams at him, swears that he is 
doing less and less work, that he is not worth his 
keep, and so on—but Edwin actually seems to enjoy 
Oswald’s spinning his wool in fury. That’s Edwin. 
Gilda is—just miserable, with flashes of sheer 
happiness when Edwin is kind. No, I don’t under¬ 
stand this condition of mind at all. Gilda is not really 
happy, and yet she dreads the idea of losing the 
fellow . . . She clings tight. That’s the queer 

dread of loss, which I spoke of before and can’t 
fathom a bit. And Edwin clings too, harder than 
Gilda. It’s really amazing. You’d think with the 
bold comradey widow in view he’d be quite willing 
to cut his lucky. Not he. Mad not to, but he won’t 
133 


SIMPLES 


do it. The other day when Edwin had been too 
Edwin, Gilda did reach a point when she asked him 
point-blank whether it would not be better to break 
off the engagement. She held out the chance with 
both hands—mind you, it was cutting her to the 
heart, but she did it. Do you think Edwin jumped at 
the opportunity? He did not, sir. He refused even 
to think of it—refused with such ardour that Gilda 
was happy for a week. (Maybe, I oughtn’t to be 
so ingenuous and spout all this. It’s a personal con¬ 
fidence. Gilda told me about it when I suggested 
she should cut the brute out of her life—she was 
crying. But I know you’re anxious about this, and 
being a child of Father’s I understand why.) Now, 
do you grasp all that? Both damned uncomfort¬ 
able, yet both refusing to give each other up. Why? 
Gilda one can almost understand. She’s still sort of 
physically in love with him, it’s only that, I swear, 
now. But Edwin has me baffled. You’d think, for 
the sake of Mrs. Hogarth and his own comparative 
enjoyment of life, he’d be only too willing to break 
away. Why does he cling to Gilda? All his in¬ 
stincts tend towards Mrs. Hogarth. Is it that he 
can’t give up Gilda’s beauty? Is he, too, still 
physically in love with her, though all the rest has 
gone? . . . No, I don’t know the answer. All 

I know is that the Logic of the thing suggests that 
he should give Gilda up and go straight to the bounc¬ 
ing charms—plus income—of Mrs. Hogarth. And 
he doesn’t. He still sticks to Gilda’s side, though 
frankly they have so little in common that he is bored 
134 


SIMPLES 


with her—as she has been with him—mentally—for 
months.” 

Rosamund, in her direct, unblushing way, started 
a train of thought that filled Alban’s brain for days 
and nights. He couldn’t understand. He could not 
see Edwin’s reason. The fellow ought to give Gilda 
up rather than bind her. He was obviously, it seemed 
to Alban, no longer in love with her. Why didn’t 
he give her up? Was it that he still loved her as 
men love women they desire as “official” wives? Was 
it desire? Was it spite? What was it? 

Alban was baffled, and he was miserable. It 
seemed too hopeless a tangle for anyone ever to 
straighten out. When Gilda wrote to say that per¬ 
haps they would not come to Iamouth after all, he 
decided that he had better let the thing slide out of 
his mind. Edwin was manifestly so dominant that 
nothing could alter the situation. 

Later, however, it appeared that either Gilda had 
asserted herself, or Mr. Conroy had taken matters 
into his own hands. A letter came to say that after 
all the Conroys would be at Iamouth for their 
holiday. 

The turmoil started again in Alban’s mind, and he 
lived for the day when he would see Gilda, and per¬ 
haps get some insight into the situation from her. 


135 


Qhapter VII 


i 

A LBAN went along the road to Iamouth, the 
k hanging road that clung to the lip of the cliff, 
that marched under a terrace of straight pines behind 
the Cap, that slipped through a tangle of woods, the 
trees wraithlike and eerie with a web of grey, ghostly, 
lichenous creeper on the sea side. 

He passed lonely and isolated houses that looked 
puritan enough to the eye, though they were full of 
the smuggler holes and caves of long ago. He went 
through the little town of Colycombe, which con¬ 
tained, as every other little town on the South Coast 
contained, the authentic house in which Charles II 
slept that one night before he escaped to the Con¬ 
tinent. He passed the great house where Kirke’s 
Lambs had carefully and efficiently massacred a 
handful of Monmouth’s adherents, and he came out 
onto the road that went swinging in a lyric drop to 
Iamouth. 

He saw Gilda the best part of a half a mile away. 
She was sitting on the cliff staring out to sea at the 
place where she had promised to wait for him. She 
sat staring out to sea all the time, not turning, not 
seeing him, even when he crossed the grass to reach 
her. She looked up with a start like a woman com- 
136 


SIMPLES 


ing out of a dream—not too pleasant a dream. And 
though she smiled at him, the smile was, he thought, 
strained and artificial. 

Strained and artificial their opening moments, too. 
They exchanged tepid commonplaces of greetings 
and news like two people with appointments to ful¬ 
fill meeting in the street. Alban found he had to 
talk and talk to keep clear of embarrassment; while 
Gilda did nothing but stare at him, as though she 
were perplexed at discoveries she was making. 

She was as beautiful as ever, more beautiful. She 
was pale, she seemed frailer, and she was listless. She 
was without animation of mind or body. She sat 
there with a curious, perceptible inertness. As he 
talked to her, his words seemd to flow by her and 
not touch her at all. He talked about Earlhampton 
and received spiritless answers. He talked about the 
Farm. He said: “I don’t really want to tell you 
anything about the Farm. I want you to come up 
and see it and enjoy it unalloyed. When can you 
come up . . 

Suddenly she said firmly: “It was the right thing 
—your coming here, Alban.” 

Taken aback, he answered: “I think it was. I’ve 
enjoyed it all.” 

“I can see it,” she said. “I keep telling myself 
you’ve changed. But you haven’t. You’ve simply 
developed. You look more serene, more sure of 
yourself. You look firmer, cleaner. You’ve got a 
—a sort of air”—she looked about her at the sweet, 
137 


SIMPLES 


fine countryside, enfolding it with a gesture—“like 
all this.” 

“Oh, I’ve been living up to my background,” he 
smiled. “One must be worthy of one’s scenery.” 

She laughed 5 she was suddenly animated into the 
old Gilda. 

“How nice that sounds,” she cried. “Like the old 
us. It carries me back years. I believe I’ve been 
missing that sort of talk.” 

“Well, I haven’t had too much of it,” he smiled. 

“No? But then the views have kept you up to 
the mark. I wonder whether that is it—that you 
haven’t really developed and that I’ve got Earl- 
hampton in my eyes—in my bones.” 

“I don’t think I am actually the changing sort,” 
said Alban. 

“No, it’s me,” she said musing. “I feel it’s me. 
I’ve slipped back. Earlhampton and its mists, smoke, 
and enervation have saturated me, overweighted me, 
and I’ve slipped back.” Again she looked at the 
scenery, at the breathing, flashing sea. “Well, this 
ought to be a cure. I thought it would be. I feel it 
is already ... You know, I determined at last, 
in spite of—of . . .”—her hands caught together 
and gripped—“of everything, that I would come 
here. I would sit here solidly and let sanity have 
its way with me—have an uninterrupted think over 
things and get life straight. I know I was right.” 

Alban had the uneasy feeling of overhearing an 
intimate argument. Although Edwin wasn’t here, 
Gilda was obviously arguing against Edwin. He said, 
138 


SIMPLES 


just to say something, “Well, the country is less likely 
to interrupt.” 

“Interrupt!” she cried. “It’s the only place to 
think in. At other places it is absurd. Doing takes 
the place of thinking. Do you know, we nearly 
went to Weybourne for these holidays?” 

“Good Lord! You would have hated it.” 

“I know. I knew I should have loathed it,” she 
said. My instinct was against it, but—” she sud¬ 
denly stared squarely at him—“Edwin wanted to go 
there.” 

“Oh,” he said feebly, “well, of course, Edwin 
likes places like that. Plenty to amuse him there.” 

“Edwin,” she said slowly, as though she had been 
thinking Edwin out for the first time, “Edwin didn’t 
like me coming here. He didn’t like me coming here 
because he must have his own way.” Her face 
darkened. “Was Edwin spoiled as a child, Alban?” 

“I don’t know,” said Alban, uneasily. “I don’t 
remember having noticed particularly—though of 
course he does like to have his own way.” 

“More than that,” she said, and again she was de¬ 
jected and limp. “He must have his own way. If 
he doesn’t have it, then—then one can’t hold him.” 

Again Alban was conscious that he was listening to 
something he was not supposed to hear. He could 
not answer. 

“And yet I know I oughtn’t to give in to him,” 
she whispered, and she was acutely miserable. Look¬ 
ing at her, Alban remembered Rosamund’s letter. 
Here indeed was a girl, sweet-souled, generous, en- 

139 


SIMPLES 


tirely swayed by affection, who was simply terrified 
at losing Edwin by holding out against his demands. 

He said sharply: “It’s not good for anyone to 
give way unreasonably. It’s not fair to you, or for 
the matter of that, to Edwin. It means trouble in 
the future. In certain things one must make a 
stand.” 

“A stand,” she said in a whisper, and she looked at 
Alban almost in terror. “I know I ought. I know 
it. Oh, but you don’t know what it means . . . 

I’m afraid. Afraid!” 

“Of Edwin?” cried Alban, in scorn. 

“Of Edwin—myself—oh, everything. When it 
comes to the actual point, I’m afraid.” 

“Look here, Gilda,” said Alban, in such a harsh 
voice, that she came out of her misery, her dejected 
day-dream, and looked at him. “You know this is all 
wrong . . .” 

She interrupted him: “I oughtn’t to have talked 
to you about this. It belongs to me alone. It’s not 
—not nice of me.” 

“I don’t know. I think—” 

“No, Alban. I oughtn’t to have talked like that. 
Not to anybody. Not to you . . . Edwin would 
not like it. We won’t talk any more of it.” 

“But, Gilda, I want to—” 

“No, Alban it’s not right. We won’t do it. It’s 
a thing I’ve got to think out myself. I’ll do it down 
here. That’s what I came down for. I’ve got a clear 
week before Edwin comes.” 

“So,” said Alban, dully, “Edwin’s coming down?” 
140 


SIMPLES 


“On Friday week, for a week, perhaps two. Now 
tell me about your Farm, and say how soon we can 
come and see it. Fm dying to see it.” 

They kept rigorously to the Farm. Her dejection 
left her as she talked, she seemed more cheerful, 
settled, happy. The absence of Edwin from the con¬ 
versation somehow made her brighter. 

He walked with her to their lodgings and renewed 
his acquaintance with Mr. Conroy, who, in view of 
his release, if only for months, from the hated 
mechanical round of exact science and his stay with 
nature, was already deep in Theocritus, Mantuanus, 
Sannazaro, Tasso and the rest of the pastoral writers. 

At the lift of the road, where she left him on his 
return journey, Gilda said, smiling: 

“It’s been nice, this new meeting, Alban. It seems 
rather eerily new. It seems as though Pd had a 
wonderful afternoon with someone who is a delight¬ 
ful combination of an old friend and a complete 
stranger. You’re nothing of the latter of course. 
And yet . . . well, there’s something new about 

you to me. It’s as though I hadn’t ever really seen 
you before. I don’t know whether it’s me, or you, or 
the country, but only here and now do I seem to see 
you as you.” 

He was puzzled, looked at her anxiously. She 
laughed. 

“Oh, don’t be afraid. It’s not unflattering—in fact, 
anything but that. You’re somehow—” she blushed a 
little. “Oh, well, it’s hard to express it. Only—only 

Hi 


SIMPLES 


I’m glad I have seen the you of you at last . . . 
Au re voir, until we come to the Farm.” 

ii 

She and her father came to the Farm two days 
later. 

Mr. Conroy, a small, frail gossamer of a man, 
strangely white, thoroughly detached and given to 
dry enthusiasms, was inclined to be whimsical, was 
inclined to act as though he came trembling through 
the magic gate of some Merlin’s garden, some old 
and sinister witch’s Wyrtzwed (Herb-yard). He 
wanted to see all the herbs that were sure cures of 
“elf-disease” and sovereign relief for the “elf-shot” 
and “flying venom.” He was ready to spout whole 
passages from all the old Herbals, from the Leech 
Book of Bald to Nicholas Culpeper. 

“I like all that sort of thing, so imaginative and 
unspecific,” he smiled. “After exact science the fine 
fantasy of unstable man is such a relief. There is so 
much music and colour in these old mad fancies— 
and, on the whole, quite as much truth.” 

“You’ll have to wait for Ahab Moap then, and 
his dog Moreover,” laughed Alban. “He’ll give you 
all the fantasy you want, and perhaps a little more.” 

“Is he coming, Alban?” cried Gilda. “I am so 
glad.” 

“I thought he had to,” smiled Alban. “He’s so 
much the natural spirit of all this. He’ll be along 
presently.” 


142 


SIMPLES 


“Meanwhile there’s the house—and the view,” 
said Gilda, who already in two days looked brighter, 
more reliant, more vividly herself. It was as though, 
removed from the domination of Edwin, her nature 
had been able to revive and strengthen. In such a 
way would a flower revive if muffling shade was 
cut away and it could get the uninterrupted sun. 

Emphatically it seemed that away from Edwin 
Gilda was more able to be herself. She did not 
speak of Edwin. She did not seem to be clogged by 
the fear of offending Edwin, she did not seem ter¬ 
rorised by the thought of losing him. “It’s only 
when he’s present, when she can see him that she’s 
afraid of losing him. It’s—physical—a sort of 
physical domination,” Alban reflected, seeing her, re¬ 
membering Rosamund’s letter. “I suppose that is 
one way of love. But is it real: I suppose so, I don’t 
know. But it’s dangerous, it makes her a sort of prey 
to the fellow.” 

Meanwhile Air. Conroy was sitting in the 
cushioned corner of the veranda, gently and subtly 
steeping himself in the atmosphere of the place, and 
Gilda was standing greedily drinking in the view, the 
quiet wind pressing her soft, light clothes against her 
young, swift, and budding figure. From the sweep 
of the thigh to the little breasts; from the lift of the 
strong, white column of the throat so firmly and de¬ 
liciously rooted in soft, flowing shoulders, to the 
small poised head in its casque of gilt hair, she was 
enrapturing. With lips parted, eyes bright, the 
finger-print of a smile at the corners of the small 

H3 


SIMPLES 


and eloquent mouth, she was a living goddess of sheer 
beauty and joy. 

Alban looked only at her, she looked only at the 
view. 

The country and the sea beneath her eyes were 
quick with light. It was that clear, shining light that 
seemed to make the whole world luminous. Sea and 
land, the bushes, the trees shone in flat, clean, bold 
colours, dramatic and massy. There was a moving 
and simple beauty in the bright grouping, and the 
clear light—blue and white—of the sky. The 
breeze flowing through it gave it the shining depth of 
crystal. 

“Alban,” cried Gilda, “you are the luckiest man 
on earth. It’s pure rapture. I could stay here and 
look and look forever.” 

That certainly jumped with Alban’s wishes; he 
could ask nothing more than that she should stay 
here, herself not the least exquisite note in that 
sympathy of beauty, for all time. It was a thing, of 
course, which he could not say. 

Mr. Conroy from his cushions was saying: “Are 
these scents natural or have you stage-managed them? 
I believe you have. They pour up here like an army 
of joy on the march, intimidating one to sloth. 
You’ve hand-trained them, Alban.” 

“Of course,” laughed Gilda. “That’s his clever¬ 
ness. He knew they’d fit in. I never experienced 
such a mingling—view and colour and scent and 
beauty.” 

“The ancients were right,” Mr. Conroy mused on, 

144 


SIMPLES 


quite ignoring his daughter. “They treated perfumes 
rationally. They knew that scents were as stimulat¬ 
ing as any other tonic: they clear the head, they ease 
the brain, dispel the vapours, clarify the intelligence. 
We lost that gift when woman robbed us of perfumes 
and by her natural instinct for excess cloyed our 
noses. Thus a gift of the gods was made effeminate 
and foppish.” 

Torn away from the view, Gilda nevertheless en¬ 
joyed the house. Alban had been right. It was 
the sort of house that Gilda would like. 

“It feels fresh and live-in-able, and, somehow, 
Alban, you haven’t made it as manny as I imagined.” 

Alban tried not to redden. It was she who had 
made it less manny, his idea of what she would do if 
she had had the furnishing. She liked his big, airy 
living-room, she would have liked to stay by his 
bookcases, talking of their contents. She seemed to 
be coming back to books with the hunger of one who 
had been starved. She would have liked to sit at his 
piano and play. She would have liked to brood over 
his pictures. It was decidedly her house. She had 
the instinct to linger enjoying it. 

They went through the sheds: the potting sheds 
where “young herbs were schooled,” as Mr. Conroy 
put it 5 the working sheds where the herbs were 
picked, flower and leaf and stem separately, by hand, 
and roots were washed, cut, and sliced; the drying 
sheds, one where sun-heat dried the herbs; another 
where, by a system of fires and big shallow racks upon 
which flower-heads or leaves were spread thinly and 
145 


SIMPLES 


delicately, slow heat drew the moisture out of the 
herbs leaving colour and properties intact. 

Alban showed them his small clean laboratory 
where he tested the strength and varieties of the 
drugs, and where he experimented in distilling the 
volatile scent oils of flowers and aromatic shrubs. 
And from there he went out into his plats of 
“weeds,” and to his wider fields running up the 
Bottom to his big acres of commercial herbs beyond. 

They were coming back from the wide fields when 
they encountered old Moap and his dog Moreover. 

iii 

Ahab Moap was a tall, spare old man, who gazed 
with pointed, grey eyes through you to some ineffable 
revelation beyond. He was always dreamy and al¬ 
ways alert. Very square in the shoulder and fine in 
the limbs, he held himself upright. With a bour- 
nous over his slack clothes, he might have posed for a 
beardless Moses. His bony face was refined and 
aesthetic, his lips a little tight. He looked dour and 
was full of dry humour. He looked a yeoman, and 
was packed with a strange bookish culture. One ex¬ 
pected a burr from him when he spoke and got none. 

A reticent old man, not always to be drawn. Con¬ 
roy and his yearning for botanical witchcraft failed 
to touch him. He listened and said, “Maybe!” He 
hadn’t read the old books Mr. Conroy spoke of, but 
he had heard old wives tell such tales. 

“Such as?” demanded the eager Mr. Conroy. 

146 


SIMPLES 


“Such as you tell, sir,” he answered drily. 

The dog Moreover—son of a thousand breeds— 
yawned, grinning hugely, as though he recognised 
and appreciated his master’s point. 

Old Conroy could not move old Moap to marvels. 
But Gilda without effort obtained reactions. He put 
into her hand a blue star of Borage, and said, “It 
rids one of all sorrows and melancholies.” 

Alban looked quickly at them, old Moap was so 
shrewd and penetrating. Had he been too penetrat¬ 
ing? But his old, mellow smile, a revelation of his 
gentleness, took away any sting his remarks might 
have had. 

“Viper-grass will do the same. There it is. I see 
Mr. Kent has left it there, but he doesn’t believe in 
it. An old man’s fancy, but not commercial, eh?” 

“We’ll see,” smiled Alban. 

“Sweet Marjoram,” said old Moap, “checks sigh¬ 
ing. Do ladies sigh now? I think they’d find more 
use for other things. In the old days they used to 
distil Pimpernel water for the complexion—it is sup¬ 
posed to soften it. I know women who use Lemons 
still. Solomon’s Seal is considered good, too, and 
it heals bruises. And Lupin seed.” He smiled in his 
quizzing way at Gilda. “Lupin seed was the real 
forerunner of the wonderful omnipotence of quack 
medicines. Burn them and you clear your house of 
gnats and small insects, mash them into a paste and 
not only do they make the user look more amiable, 
but could, at a pinch, totally eradicate small-pocks 
147 


SIMPLES 


marks. The old ‘green man 5 had nothing to learn 
from our advertisement columns. 55 

“Who was the old green man? 55 from Gilda. 

“He went round collecting weeds, herbs, 55 said old 
Moap. “And he sold them. Sometimes he did some 
rough distilling for green oils. You 5 ve seen public 
houses called ‘The Green Man. 5 They are shrines to 
his memory. 55 

“I 5 m going bald, 55 said Conroy. “Can you give me 
a herb to arrest that? 55 

“Yarrow or the ashes of Southernwood in oil were 
the old remedies for that, sir, 55 smiled old Moap. His 
eyes twinkled. “And Peony seeds in wine cured one 
of nightmare 5 and Betony gives courage. 55 

“I love the name Betony, 55 said Gilda. “There 
were beautiful names among the old herbs. 55 

“Beautiful still, and yet some are forgotten. I 
like the old name for Periwinkle. It was Joy-of- 
the ground! A rich name, one couldn’t dream of a 
better. Periwinkle was considered good for cramp. 
Old men tied it round their legs; and it was also a 
charm against envy and terror and demoniac posses¬ 
sion. Then there is Alleluia, the old name for Wood- 
Sorrel, and Maythe for Camomile. Goat 5 s-beard is 
still called Go-to-bed-at-noon, a Cudweed is called 
Live-for-ever and Marigold was called Jackanapes- 
on-Horseback, but I like Marigold better. Then 
there’s Yellow Touch-Me-Not, and Herb Robert, 
and Prunella was called Carpenter’s Herb, or Sickel- 
wort, because its corolla looks like a bill-hook, and 
it was supposed to cure wounds made with edged 
148 


SIMPLES 


tools. Devil’s Milk, another name for Petty Spurge, 
isn’t to my fancy. But I like Devil’s-bit for the Wild 
Scabious. The story goes that the Devil bit the root 
because he was so angry at its doing so much good to 
mankind.” 

“I like that,” said Gilda. “I like a story like that 
clinging to a plant.” 

“You’ll like the legend about the Rose of Jericho 
better,” he smiled. “Do you know it? It’s that the 
Rose of Jericho opened the night our Lord was 
born, and that if placed in a house it will always open 
when a child is born.” 

“That’s really lovely,” said Gilda. 

Old Moap went on. “There’s the story of Lady’s 
Bedstraw, too. At first it had a white flower, but it 
was used as our Lord’s bed in the manger, and when 
God’s body touched it, it turned to gold in joy—as 
you can see for yourself to this day.” 

“Meadowsweet,” said old Moap, pointing, “Queen 
Elizabeth’s favourite carpet. She always had her 
chambers strewn with it, they say. Meadowsweet, 
Water-mint, and Vervain were the old herbs they 
flung down on the floor in the Middle-Ages, when 
carpets weren’t used. They were supposed to add 
to the gaiety of the evening, too, their scents had a 
‘merry’ effect.” 

All the way back to the house he was talking of the 
old simples he loved, telling of their well-known or 
forgotten properties. With a queer twinkle he could 
let them have some outrageous story of their 
qualities j how Hound’s Tongue keeps dogs from 
149 


SIMPLES 


barking, or how a double-walnut carried as a charm 
cures headaches, how certain nutshells applied to 
children’s heads make grey eyes black, how a cucum¬ 
ber in a sick child’s bed rids it of fevers, how oil of 
nettles rubbed on the limbs keeps out the cold. 

He was full of the old lore, fantastic and practical. 
“We’re laughed at of course,” he smiled. “But 
sometimes they come back to us. They have suddenly 
discovered Comfrey again. It was an old wives’ 
remedy that fell out of favour and became no more 
than cattle fodder. Then, quite suddenly, a doctor 
found there was something in it, and it has come to 
its own again.” 

“Oh, I think we’ve neglected herbs too much,” 
cried Alban. “After all why are they less useful 
than minerals and synthetics? They’re more natural, 
anyway.” 

“More than that,” said old Moap. “I hold that 
when God found sickness coming to the world 
through the frailty of fallen man, He saw to it that 
the cure would grow to hand. Grow, as is natural, 
not have to be dug like your minerals. And how do 
the animals find their cures? The cures are there, I 
say. And you’ll find them with less hunting than if 
you manufactured them in the chemist’s shop. And 
there’s a cure for everything. They tell me that the 
mongoose knows to what plant to go when he’s bitten 
by a serpent. A friend of mine says that in South 
America there’s a fruit with an acid so violent that 
it can cauterise any snake bite. And there’s water- 
vine from which a man can drink when he’s lost in 
150 


SIMPLES 


the jungle, out of reach of pure water. Nature pro¬ 
vides, and the more I see of Nature, the more cer¬ 
tain I am of it. Go back to Nature and her herbs and 
man will be all right.” 

“He’s a dear,” said Gilda when he had gone, when 
she and her father were preparing to go. “And the 
chief wonder about him is his gentleness. But I be¬ 
lieve that’s part of all this. Here the fret and worry 
and anxiety and beastliness of life drop right away 
from you.” 

“Not quite,” said Alban. “Some of the cottagers 
round here lead furious and embittered existences. 
They have abominable feuds and quarrels. Even 
the insects, Fabre says, are cruel and cannibalistic. 
The country isn’t inevitably peaceful.” 

“Then what is it that does it?” she asked. “What 
makes him like that—what is it that’s doing some¬ 
thing of the same thing to you, Alban?” 

“I think it is doing what one likes, as hard as one 
can. Giving the best in one, doing it perhaps a little 
for the sake of others. And doing that best in sur¬ 
roundings that suit one. Surroundings like this suit 
old Moap—and me. We can exert ourselves to the 
greatest capacity without fret.” 

“I’m glad you’ve come here,” repeated Gilda. “So 
very glad, Alban. And I’m glad I’ve seen you here.” 


1 Ji 


Qhapter VIII 


i 

G ILDA regained her old resilience and sense of 
adventure. Stye was abruptly, it seemed, 
changed from an anxious, listless, dispirited girl into 
a creature, sparkling, vivacious, avid of life. 

Her interest was almost fierce. There was a 
greediness in the zest with which she swung back to 
her old preoccupations, her books and her music. 
Her passion for all manner of walks showed her al¬ 
most hungry desire to tear all the beauty out of the 
district. 

Alban laughed at her for her energy when she 
dragged him away from work to tramp swinging 
miles to see a small wood of curiously melancholy 
trees—which were not trees at all, but a company of 
too agnostic knights and ladies who had jeered at a 
witch, perhaps Morgan le Fay herself, and had been 
promptly bewitched into growing timber. 

“Of course I’m over-hungry,” she laughed. “I’m 
doing exactly what these trees would do if they were 
suddenly changed back to their human shapes. 
They’d go out after life with both hands and with 
all their spirit to make up for all they had lost.” 

“My dear girl, but you haven’t been a woody 
birch since the reign of King Arthur!” 

152 


SIMPLES 


“Almost!” she laughed, and her lifted face had 
the elusive, gossamery beauty of one who had had 
traffic with the mysteries of witches. “I feel as 
though I have been standing still and stagnant in 
eldritch gloom for quite as long. I feel that I have 
lost whole months that might have been excitingly, 
vividly used. I seem to have enormous blank spaces 
to fill, and Pm greedy to fill them . . . greedy, 
greedy.” 

Alban, lying on his back watching her animation, 
her too great animation, the intensity and feverish¬ 
ness of it, said soberly, “It’s safer for people who 
are so hungry to eat delicately, Gilda.” 

“You think I am overdoing it,” she laughed. “Oh, 
but Pm not. You can’t overdo appreciation of 
beauty.” 

Alban was rather afraid she could. He was feel¬ 
ing that after the inhibitions of the past few months 
the pendulum was swinging back with too great vio¬ 
lence. That wasn’t good for people with pendulum 
natures. It foreshadowed a swing as violent the 
other way. 

“No, one should go slowYven with beauty,” he 
said. “If one loves the sunlight on the hills and 
seas too intensely, one only hates the more a sea-mist 
that makes all things drab and clammy.” 

“I believe I’d adore a sea-mist, and see a wonder 
in its drabness,” cried Gilda, in superb defiance. 

That was another thing, her defiance. 

There was no doubt about it, part of the intensity 
of her change was defiance of the things from which 
153 


SIMPLES 


she had changed. And that meant a defiance of 
Edwin and his domination. It was, in fact, rather 
unpleasantly manifest. It was not enough for a na¬ 
ture like hers to swing violently away from misery 
to happiness. She had to be scornful of the misery, 
of the things that had made her miserable. 

It was not enough for her to enjoy a vision of the 
swinging hills and sea. She had to be contemptuous 
of the self that had been blinded to the sea and the 
hills. 

The note came up again and again. “What a 
little fool I have been to allow my eyes to be drawn 
away from things like this,” she would say. 

Or: “One can give up too much of oneself. One 
can be too plastic, and one simply gains misery by 
it. If one surrenders one’s whole self one has noth¬ 
ing to fall back upon.” 

“Aren’t you surrendering your whole self now, 
Gilda?” Alban asked a little anxiously. “You are 
giving yourself so entirely to this that when you go 
back—” 

“To what?” she demanded fiercely, defiant again, 
defiant always. 

“To your old mood,” he said after hesitation. He 
knew he ought to say “To Edwin,” but he could not. 
“When you get back to your old mood the reaction 
may be as drastic.” 

“You’re wrong,” she laughed back. “In the first 
place I am not going back to my old mood. I can 
see that I have been quite stupid. I have given way 
where I ought to have been firm. I’ve surrendered 

154 


SIMPLES 


too much of myself, been the prey of—of, well, 
alien conditions. In future I’m going to be myself, 
to maintain myself firmly.” Tnere was a high and 
lovely colour in her cheeks as she spoke, the colour of 
defiance. She stared out over the hills. 

“And all this,” she cried, “is going to help me 
to be firm. That’s the second thing. I shall have 
all this to fall back on. I won’t feel so—so bereft 
of support. If the worst comes to the worst I shall 
be able to bear it—with this.” She was still staring 
out over the hills, speaking as though he were not 
present. “One must assert one’s individuality. If 
one surrenders one is nothing, has no defences.” 

Later in the week she said apropos of nothing in 
particular: “After all, if Edwin can go his way, I 
can go mine, too. He doesn’t surrender, why 
should I?” 

Alban knew the answer quite well. But he 
could not tell her that she had no chance on those 
lines with Edwin; she was a creature of surrenders 
and Edwin wasn’t. 

He could see now that it was the all-powerful na¬ 
ture of her emotions that made her not merely what 
she was now, but what she had been when she ar¬ 
rived If she could surrender tremendously to en¬ 
thusiasms, her surrender to dejections and fears 
could be no less tremendous. 

She had the great qualities and defects of a nature 
whole-heartedly, nobly generous. She gave all and 
with a splendid spontaneity of spirit. A fine trait, 
a splendid trait. But it had its dangers. A woman 
155 


SIMPLES 


who pours herself out unstintedly in finer emotions, 
must also pour herself out unstintedly in her miser¬ 
ies. That wasn’t a good thing at all. It made 
her helpless in her fears, made her a prey to any¬ 
one who could command that fear and misery. . . . 
No, it wasn’t good. It was worse when a nature like 
that was subject to a nature like Edwin’s. . . . “In¬ 
timidated into doing things she detests for fear of 
losing him,” Rosamund had written of Gilda. 
“That’s what it amounts to, just plain fear of loss. 
And the brute knows it and turns the thumb¬ 
screw. ...” 

ii 

Gilda maintained her high, defiant spirit through 
the days that followed. She said: “I’ve had a good, 
solid moral overhaul. I’m going back to Earlhamp- 
ton a new woman, a resolute woman. I’m not going 
to sit about waiting—waiting for things to happen. 
I’m going to go straight ahead with the things I want 
to do, and the other things will have to fit in with 
me. I’m going to take up the course of modern 
authors at the University, and go regularly through 
the symphony concerts at the Institute. Life’s going 
to have that backbone, anyhow.” 

That was defiance. And it gave him a picture of 
her sitting at home in the vague, exquisite dusk of the 
Conroy house waiting for Edwin to call; waiting; 
doing nothing at all, simply sitting there until the 
man who dominated her chose to come. And then 
when he didn’t come, sitting again and waiting 
156 


SIMPLES 


again. Dead hours, wasted hours, miserable, heart¬ 
breaking hours, and she was telling him that she was 
going to change all that. Defiance! 

She was telling him that she was going to break 
away into the literature Edwin pointedly despised 
and the music that bored him to yawns. She was 
going her own way and he would follow or not. 
Defiance! 

She planned her autumn and winter with a fierce, 
clear enthusiasm, an enthusiasm much too fierce. It 
was less a natural instinct for her own enrichment 
than an attack on Edwin. Alban could see that in 
every detail. She would see these people whom 
Edwin loathed and made her neglect. She would 
not go to those dances which gave Edwin peculiar 
satisfaction. Defiance again. Always defiance, too 
much insistence on it. 

And yet it seemed to answer the test. It seemed 
to uphold her when Edwin wrote that he could not 
come down on the Friday they had agreed upon. 
She had a laugh, a laugh that sounded genuine, if 
slightly contemptuous, on her lips as she told Alban. 

“Does he say when he will come?” asked Alban. 

“He leaves that deliciously in the air—that’s Ed¬ 
win’s way,” she said. “I expect I am to be tanta¬ 
lised. Come for a walk, Alban. I prefer concrete 
scenic fact^to the tactics of Edwin.” 

They went for a walk, and she was in tearing 
spirits. In Combe-beneath-Buddle they had a clot¬ 
ted cream tea. They discussed vividly the local 
legend of certain Mysterious Strangers who had come 
157 


SIMPLES 


to that spot in foreign ships centuries ago and had 
founded a fabulous civilisation among the woad- 
painted Britons. 

“Joseph of Arimathea is said to have been their 
leader, of course,” Alban said. “He always is. 
Every river estuary between here and the Sand¬ 
wich Flats in Kent has the same legend, and it is 
always Joseph of Arimathea.” 

“I have a much better theory,” laughed Gilda. 
“I think it was the discovery of Europe by America. 
I think the Mysterious Visitants were adventurous 
seamen from Aztec or pre-Aztec civilisation. They 
were nearly done to death on the Altars of the Sun 
because they fancied that dry land existed over the 
edge of the world beyond the Dark Sea, and mon¬ 
ster, hairy barbarians dwelt in those lands. The 
priests proved in loud voices that Tezcatlipoca—I 
hope it was Tezcatlipoca—had created Mexico as 
the centre of the world, and all was void outside, and 
there was no such land as Europe. But the hardy 
explorers sailed out, and were carried by the trade 
winds through distress and storm until they landed 
upon England. There they discovered barbarous 
inhabitants of low culture and primitive and un¬ 
pleasant instincts, not at all comparable with the high 
moral and social level of the American. And they 
settled and tried to civilise us.” 

“That’s rather nice,” Alban laughed. “It’s a sort 
of revenge for Cabot and Columbus.” 

“I’m prepared to prove my statements,” she cried. 
And she went on to prove them. She insisted that 
153 


SIMPLES 


this was the way certain American words, such as 
Fall for Autumn had become current in parts of 
England, Sussex, for instance. She also declared 
that the huge remains at Stonehenge indicated that 
a race with sky-scraper instincts quite foreign to the 
wattle-hut and suburban villa instincts of the abo¬ 
rigines must once have existed in the land. 

She was gay, vivacious, bubbling. Her defiance 
seemed a settled quality. She spoke no more of 
Edwin’s visit, and it seemed she was not in the least 
Upset by her disappointment. So she went on 
through Friday, through Saturday, gay, uncon¬ 
cerned, ready not to trouble her mind about Edwin 
if he did not trouble his about her. 

Sunday the same. Her spirits were, if anything, 
higher. Even Alban was convinced that her attitude 
was real. He did not realise that underneath things 
were different, that the pendulum that had swung 
so far was swinging as vehemently back. He was 
unrealising even when she said, as they talked of 
the letters he had received from home, “How is the 
Factory—busy?” 

“Oswald sees ruin ahead,” smiled Alban. “He 
always does. He says things are pretty slow. That 
means the usual summer slackness.” 

“He’s probably sent Edwin round to whip up 
trade,” she said, with a laugh that deceived him, 
for he answered without thinking: 

“Oh, no, there is something in Rosamund’s letter 
which suggests that Edwin is eating the lotus at 
home.” 


159 


SIMPLES 


“That means he did begin his holiday on Friday 
as arranged,” said Gilda. Her tone made Alban 
recognise he had built too much on her pretence of 
indifference. 

She was gay at once, too gay, but he saw through 
her now, and cursed Edwin. What was the fellow 
doing? Something to annoy Gilda? Something 
deliberately meant to upset her? He was on his 
guard. When she asked later, and with a casual¬ 
ness that hurt him by its effort, “Did Rosamund or 
Oswald say anything about Edwin’s movements, Al¬ 
ban?” he was ready. 

“Nothing at all,” he answered. “Rosamund just 
said he was about, that was all.” 

“She didn’t say whether he had gone to the Forest, 
to Brackenhurst, I suppose?” 

He was startled, hurt that she should know about 
Brackenhurst. He answered curtly, “No, she gave 
no details,” and felt that he would like to punch Ed¬ 
win’s head. 

He couldn’t help feeling that Gilda had got to 
know about Brackenhurst from Edwin himself. He 
did not know why he felt that, save that he did, and 
powerfully. It was, after all, the sort of thing that 
Edwin was quite capable of. He knew it would 
torment her, disturb her, make her more plastic in 
his hands. 

He could see the poison working before his eyes. 

Gilda had begun to think about Brackenhurst and 
it was undermining her defiance. Alban wondered 
how much she knew, whether she knew definitely 
160 


SIMPLES 


or merely guessed there was a Mrs. Hogarth. 
Whether she knew or not she seemed to recognise 
some rivalry. She was becoming unnerved. Her 
determination not to care, to be happy in herself 
alone was being sapped away. 

It was queer and distressing. Alban felt as Rosa¬ 
mund had felt, he couldn’t quite understand Gilda. 

In the past week he could have sworn that she had 
thrown off the yoke of love. She had been her¬ 
self, independent. She had been an individual with 
so little in common with Edwin, so little to bind 
her, that Alban felt she was emancipated. He 
would not have been surprised to hear her say that 
she had realised how deep the gulf was between 
her and Edwin, that she had decided to break with 
him. When she was out of touch with him, away 
from his physical domination, she seemed to see 
things clearly as they were. And yet here she was, 
a woman of intelligence, as Rosamund had said, re¬ 
duced to hopeless misery at the hint that there was 
danger of losing him. 

“I believe he’s stage-managed it deliberately,” 
Alban thought, furiously. “I believe if the brute 
had come straight down here on Friday, with her in % 
the condition she was then, she would have seen 
him as he really is, as things really are, and she would 
have ended the miserable business. And I believe 
he knew that, and is simply tantalising her—playing 
on her nerves.” He stared out from his veranda 
at the view, not seeing it at all. “The damn cur,” 
he said aloud. “He knows the power of vague- 
161 


SIMPLES 


ness, indecision, uncertain fear. Practice has made 
him an expert.” 

On Wednesday, defying a hint in Gilda’s note, 
Alban went in to Iamouth to see her. He did see 
her. He found her on the front, standing a little 
apart from Edwin, poignantly apart. 

Not that Edwin minded or reacted to that pathetic 
aloofness. There was another woman who stood 
close enough, a big woman, in structure as bold and 
flashing as the heavily accented gold of her hair. 
She was a woman with a temperament as loud and 
as unconcerned as her laugh. Alban had only to 
see her standing there, so simple and good-tempered, 
so certain that nobody on earth could take exception 
to her presence, to know that he was meeting the 
widow, Mrs. Hogarth. 

iii 

Alban’s arrival relieved the situation. 

He could not make Gilda less miserable, but he 
could make that misery less public. He could save 
Gilda from being an unsatisfactory third in this party 
which included her fiance. 

Whether Edwin resented his coming as a disturb¬ 
ance to his plan he did not know, but it seemed to 
Alban that there was a plan of some sort, and that 
Mrs. Hogarth was part of it, and that, very quickly, 
Edwin brought him into it, too. 

He said with detestable aplomb: “I guessed 
you’d be over, Alban. Gilda tells me you have 
162 


SIMPLES 


not seen each other for a half-day—or is it a whole 
day?” 

He was at his old trick. Alban said quietly, 
evenly, “Are you asking me to give you a public 
thrashing to cure you of your bounderism?” 

Edwin’s eyes glinted, but he did not fail to score: 
“Got you as bad as that, has it?” he said with a light 
sneer, and then, as Alban’s right arm stiffened, “I 
don’t think you have met Mrs. Hogarth. Emmie, 
come here and shake hands with the family paragon 
of all the virtues.” 

Emmie gave him her hand, large, fleshed, and 
strong, ending the clasp with a little lingering 
squeeze, as though she were testing him out by some 
Masonic sign of sex. She said she was pleased to 
meet any brother of Ed’s. Not sarcasm that, but 
one of the stock texts she employed in lieu of con¬ 
versation. 

Alban did not dislike Emmie. She had a big, 
enfolding geniality. She was indestructibly simple 
and unaware of antagonisms. She was quite un¬ 
affected and unperceptive. She liked being with 
Ed. She even liked being with Ed’s present com¬ 
panions. It simply didn’t occur to her that the lik¬ 
ing was not shared by them. 

She was a big woman, who would be larger as time 
and her undisciplined instinct for luxury conquered 
her. One realised from her taut, fine garments 
that a secret but ruthless battle was being waged be¬ 
tween her stays and the flesh. Her blouse was 
splendid and congested with her breasts. Her thick, 
163 


SIMPLES 


soft, and magnificent neck already hinted the birth of 
many chins. 

But for the present she was still rather fine in her 
massiveness. There was a Boadicean sumptuousness 
about her. And her manner with its expansive sim¬ 
plicity was not unattractive. She was a jolly woman, 
coarse-fibred perhaps, but genuine, good-hearted, 
and generous. She was without particular intelli¬ 
gence, but she had enough of worldly currency to 
make her a good companion, to make her indeed an 
excellent companion for Edwin. 

Obviously she and Edwin had whole worlds in 
common. That became apparent through the day. 
She was so much more at home with Edwin that, on 
the few occasions when she tried at some vague call 
of politeness to talk exclusively with Alban or Gilda, 
she seemed to feel herself out of her metier. Those 
talks became silences so sodden that she only too 
willingly went back to Edwin. And the dank si¬ 
lence that had been before was immediately dissi¬ 
pated by their irrepressible exchanges and the loud 
ring of her laugh. She was certainly a better com¬ 
panion for Edwin than Gilda, who seemed awkward 
and stricken dumb in her misery. And it seemed 
to Alban that Edwin deliberately underlined the 
fact. 

“Is this,” he wondered, “a rather vulgar form of 
hint? Is this Edwin’s way of showing Gilda that 
they don’t suit each other, and that she ought to re¬ 
linquish him to Mrs. Hogarth, who is obviously more 
compatible with him?” 

164 


SIMPLES 

He might have thought so, only he remembered 
that Edwin had had his chance for ending the en¬ 
gagement and had refused to give Gilda up. If he 
still held to that, then his conduct was simply in¬ 
comprehensible. 

They spent a detestable day—that is, Gilda and 
he did. Edwin and Mrs. Hogarth seemed happy and 
satisfied enough. Gilda and he were like two ghosts 
outside their hearty, fleshly world. They trailed be¬ 
hind the firm, vigorous bodies, hearing their voices 
and their clear, loud laughter, but unable to join 
in, unable to take part. They were as lost spirits 
outside the veil, wretched, helpless, hopeless, bereft 
of will and physical attributes. 

It was horrible. They could do nothing. They 
could not even support each other. They could only 
wander behind the unconcerned and laughing pair, 
and note how intimately and well they got on 
together. 

A flash of Edwin’s wit startled Emmie Hogarth 
out of the very slight discipline she put on in com¬ 
pany. Her laugh was abruptly terrific and discord¬ 
ant. She struck Edwin playfully, reprovingly on 
the arm. In that moment she was starkly vulgar, 
and Gilda, wincing under the laugh, cried, “What do 
men see in such women?” 

“I suppose she amuses him,” said Alban, lamely, 
but Gilda was already angry at the slip she had made. 

“I suppose that’s it. I like her. She’s good- 
hearted and genuine.” 

165 


SIMPLES 


Alban had himself recovered, but he refused to 
let the thing slide back into pretence. 

“What possessed him to bring her here?” he 
snapped. 

“Oh, he didn’t bring her,” she said, anxious even 
yet to defend Edwin. “She heard he was coming 
and ran him over in her car.” 

“She goes back then?” 

“After tea.” 

“Edwin too?” 

“No,” she said slowly. “Edwin is staying on for 
a week. He’s been able to get away after all.” 

Alban registered a resolve to speak his mind to 
Edwin at the first opportunity. But he had nothing 
more to say, because all he could think about was 
Edwin’s damn blackguardism in bringing that woman 
here. 

It was Gilda who broke down the silence: 

“Who is she, Alban?” she asked, trying to be 
casual. 

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I only know 
she’s a widow, very well off, and that she lives at 
Brackenhurst.” 

“She’s rich and lives rather dashingly in a fine 
house, she does exactly what she likes, shocks her 
neighbours, but attracts quite a number by her—her 
splash.” 

Alban stared at her: “I don’t know anything about 
that. I’m rather surprised you know it, Gilda.” 

“Oh, I know,” she said, and she looked over the 
sea with dreary eyes. She went on: “I don’t know 
166 


SIMPLES 


anything real . Pve not met her before, Pve never 
seen her house—Edwin has never actually mentioned 
her to me. But Pve heard—whispers, you know. 
And he laughs instead of denies ... I mean I know 
he visits her a lot, and I’ve asked him.” 

“Oswald knows about her,” Alban said. “He 
told me there was nothing in it.” 

“That’s what his laugh—Edwin’s—implied. But 
I don’t know. ... Of course, she’s his sort—in many 
ways. Her gaiety and boldness are the things he 
likes. She seems to live in a tearing, free-handed 
way at Brackenhurst, keeps open house with plenty 
of company for dining, dancing, motoring, racing, 
and cards. She sometimes dashes into Earlhampton 
to fill boxes at the Paradium. They generally crack 
jokes with personal friends among the comedians 
on the stage. Edwin loves all that sort of thing 
you know.” 

Alban, not being able to deny it, walked on si¬ 
lently. He stared dumbly at the back of the pair 
before them. They were inexpressibly bright. They 
were, it seemed, talking with long-wonted inti¬ 
macy, and Mrs. Hogarth’s hand was resting on Ed¬ 
win’s arm, perhaps to enforce attention, but certainly 
with the appearance of habitual naturalness. 

Gilda seemed fascinated by that hand. “She is 
fond of him, too,” she said, “Pm sure she is. She’s 
ready to give him anything he wants— anything .” 

There was a curious note in Gilda’s voice, a note 
of fear that was almost despair. It irritated Alban. 
He said almost sharply: “Well, let her give him 
167 


SIMPLES 


anything and everything, Gilda. And let him take 
it. Don’t put yourself out about the fellow.” 

She looked at him quickly, dropped her eyes, and 
her breath caught. But she said nothing, and again 
the dreary silence of ghosts drifted down over them. 

iv 

Mrs. Hogarth delayed her going till the last pos¬ 
sible minute. She left with gusto, making all the 
parade of her large self and her scarcely larger car 
that her peculiar nature demanded. It was part 
of the parade that made her lean out of the window 
and in her loud, jolly, final voice arrange to meet 
Edwin on the very day he left Iamouth for Earl- 
hampton. She made the engagement with a sense 
of finality, as though she had complete control of his 
movements. Gilda and Alban stood by the motor, 
feeling that they were completely outside this in¬ 
timacy. 

Gilda made excuses and vanished, Alban got his 
hat to walk back to the Farm, Edwin was going to 
an hotel. 

“Better walk a little way with me, Edwin,” said 
Alban, in a harsh voice. 

Edwin grinned at him in his cool, sly, assured 
way. 

“I think most decidedly better not,” he said. 

They were away from the Conroy’s lodgings by 
then, standing in a quiet lane. Alban glared at his 
brother’s red and insolent face. 

168 


SIMPLES 


“That means you realise you’ve been acting like 
a cad,” he snapped. 

“No, it means I realise you’re a bit of a bore,” 
grinned Edwin. 

“You’ve acted like a cad,” Alban insisted. “You 
know it. To bring that woman here was an insult.” 

“Not an insult,” grinned Edwin, and he seemed 
to say the words with a peculiar relish. “Insult was 
not the idea at all.” 

“You’re simply a cur,” snapped Alban. “A damn 
cad. You’re not fit for a girl like Gilda. You’re 
not fit to touch her.” 

“One of the discoveries you’ve been making to¬ 
gether during the last weeks?” asked Edwin, with 
a leer in his sneering voice. 

Alban glared, saw the abominable suggestion in 
Edwin’s face. His body bunched. There was no 
doubt that he was ready to fly at his brother’s throat 
like a wolf. 

Edwin saw it, laughed softly, stepped back, and 
swung his heavy stick significantly. He had already 
told Alban that its head was loaded with lead. 

“That wouldn’t stop me,” cried Alban. 

“I know,” said Edwin, with a curious ugly soft¬ 
ness. “But it’d mark you prettily. I owe you a 
mark or two, you—you self-righteous swine.” 

It was the venom in his tone that stopped Alban, 
not the stick. It was an appalling tone. It was 
brutish in its hate. Looking at his brother, he saw 
that the face was brutish too. The smile was still 
169 


SIMPLES 


there, but the lips were back too far over the teeth, 
and their bareness showed the animal. 

He saw that Edwin meant exactly what he said. 
He wanted to mark him. He wanted to strike and 
pulp his face with that loaded stick. He was only 
waiting for the excuse. He was eager for the excuse. 

Alban was appalled. He had never liked his 
brother’s habits, his evilness; but he had never really 
disliked him. Certainly he had never even been 
touched by the hatred that glared out of Edwin’s 
sly, pert eyes. He was shocked that anyone should 
feel like that towards him, and that the person should 
be his own brother. 

And, being appalled, he was abruptly cooled. He 
suddenly realised what would happen if he fought 
Edwin as every one of his instincts seemed to bid 
him fight Edwin. He saw, quite coldly, that once 
they began to fight they would stop at nothing. 
Edwin would go on and on slashing at his face with 
the leaded stick, and he would go on until he tore 
Edwin’s throat right out. He saw it quite plainly. 
He saw all the consequences to the one of them who 
survived (he seemed to know it would be himself), 
saw the effect on the Kent family and Kent Drugs, 
to Rosamund and Dunstan, whom he suddenly knew 
he loved intensely, and, above all, to Gilda. All 
this he saw in a flash, as Edwin glared like an animal, 
and held his stick with shaking eagerness. 

All in a flash, and in a flash Edwin saw him relax, 
and the glare on his own face softened to mere dis¬ 
appointed rage. 


170 


SIMPLES 


He began to spit taunts at Alban—a filthy stream 
of lacerating abuse, coupling Alban’s righteousness 
with his apparent cowardice, dragging in his “crank¬ 
iness,” his pious airs, and tangling them unpleasantly, 
disgustingly in innuendo with Gilda. The stream 
was beastly and ceaseless, and should have been 
searching. It wasn’t. It merely made Alban sick, 
sick at the sound of it, sick that this man was his 
brother, sick that he was to be the husband of Gilda. 

In the middle of it he made a gesture that caused 
Edwin to swing his stick alertly. Alban put his own 
hands behind him, half turned away. 

“Good night,” he said harshly. “Better go home, 
Edwin.” 

Edwin slipped in front of him. 

“I thought you’d funk it,” he snarled. “The 
mean streak is there. You’re not a man. . . .” 

Alban went straight at him. The stick hovered 
for a moment, but it was Alban’s cold will that was 
the stronger. It was Edwin who funked the stroke, 
and in that moment of hesitation Alban had his 
brother’s right arm. One hand was behind the elbow 
pushing, one hand on the wrist, pulling. Edwin’s 
muscles were unable to resist the strain. He gave 
a little yelp as he felt his elbow giving; he dropped 
the stick. 

Alban picked the stick from the ground and threw 
it over the hedge. 

Without looking round at Edwin he walked 
straight ahead towards Moap’s Farm. 

171 


SIMPLES 


V 

To his astonishment, Gilda and his brother came 
up to see the farm a couple of days later. His as¬ 
tonishment was increased by Gilda’s extreme happi¬ 
ness. The wonder of this quite obliterated the in¬ 
cident between Edwin and himself. 

Gilda was radiantly, deliciously happy. He had 
never seen her so possessed by it. And such colour, 
beauty, and vivacity did it give her that it seemed to 
him that she had bloomed anew—or perhaps only 
now had fully bloomed. Yes, it seemed that she was 
changed. There was a fullness, a richness about her 
manner that was subtly strange. 

Perhaps that was the sheer contrast between her 
as he saw her now and as he had seen her on that 
miserable day of Mrs. Hogarth’s visit. But grad¬ 
ually he felt it wasn’t that. He saw that this hap¬ 
piness, so unlimited, unfettered, and indeed defiant, 
was new to him because it was a form of happiness 
he had never seen in her, never been able to give her. 
It was a happiness only Edwin could give her. That 
idea reached certainty as their short visit went on— 
her happiness sprang entirely from Edwin. 

He could see that Edwin was much more to her 
than looking over the Farm, though she insisted that 
she had come here to show Edwin the Farm. He 
saw that anything he might say or explain was outside 
her. Edwin had only to speak, look, make a ges¬ 
ture, and she left Alban in the middle of a sentence to 
attend to Edwin. 


172 


SIMPLES 


She was beautiful. She never lost her singular 
distinction, she never became gushing or too fond. 
There she was, completely and utterly absorbed in 
their peculiar and sacred intimacy. Alban and the 
rest of the world were a thousand miles outside. 

Alban was puzzled. It seemed to him that some¬ 
thing more than mere “making it up” with Edwin 
had happened to her. She seemed more settled, 
more certain in her absorption in him. “It’s as 
though she were utterly sure of him now and knew 
Mrs. Hogarth to be completely wiped out.” 

That was exactly her attitude. She seemed ab¬ 
solutely outside her old fears, timidities, jealousies, 
miseries. Perhaps something had happened. Per¬ 
haps Mrs. Hogarth was indeed wiped out by that 
happening—by some understanding, by some tre¬ 
mendous coming together that had showed them ex¬ 
actly what they meant to each other. Whatever it 
was, it had been something tremendous, for Gilda’s 
change was complete. All the differences in outlook, 
tastes, and way of life seemed to have vanished. 
They’d been swallowed up in something bigger, 
Alban thought. 

His own interest in the farm trickled away under 
her sumptuous inattention. He became even a little 
irritated at the impersonal quality of himself on this 
fine afternoon and on his own estate. He stared at 
Gilda, wondering. He asked himself why she had 
taken the trouble to come here at all. 

“Unless,” he thought, “it’s to show me that things 
173 


SIMPLES 


are changed, and that things are all right between her 
and Edwin.” 

As he thought this, he turned from Gilda’s face 
and caught sight of Edwin’s eyes fixed on him. He 
thought Edwin was smirking, that his pert, sly, sneer¬ 
ing eyes had a meaning—a meaning even for himself. 

“Perhaps they have,” he thought. “Perhaps he’s 
‘showing me,’ letting me see that after all he really 
is Gilda’s lover. He is the one with the real power.” 

It was only a little later that he realised that the 
Farm was but an excuse to get away from old Con¬ 
roy, from Iamouth, from everybody but themselves. 
Having rattled through the grounds in the most per¬ 
functory way, they were eager to be off. 

“You’d better stay to tea,” said Alban, surprised. 
“You’ll never get back to Iamouth in time.” 

“Do you think we’d better stay to tea, Gilda?” said 
Edwin, his smile into her eyes a little mocking. Her 
glance seemed to be pinioned by his. There was 
a curious deep blush on her cheeks and neck, and her 
chin was tipped upwards. 

“It’ll be all right, Alban,” she said. “We’ll get 
there in time.” 

Edwin laughed softly as she said that, and she 
blushed again; as though her blush cloaked some 
delectable private joke of their own. 

Alban guessed what that joke might be a little 
later—at about six o’clock. 

Standing on his veranda, he chanced to look at the 
long, sharply white cliff road that went towards 
Iamouth. On that road, breasting the rise near the 
174 


SIMPLES 


cliff top, were two figures and they were unmistak¬ 
ably those of his brother and Gilda. 

They had neither got to Iamouth nor to the gar¬ 
dens for tea then, and they had not even attempted 
to get there. 

Alban, with his knowledge of the idyllic nooks and 
coppices along that road, did not have to ask what it 
was that had made the lovers forget such a trivial 
thing as tea. He smiled, a little wryly, perhaps. 

vi 

Alban saw neither Gilda nor Edwin during the ten 
days that followed. They did not come near him. 
They did not even invite him to join them. It was 
only business taking him into Iamouth on the tenth 
day that brought him across Gilda. 

She was sitting on the cliff by the road as he had 
seen her on her first coming to Iamouth. As on 
that occasion she did not hear his approach until he 
was close to her. 

But the reason was entirely different. She was 
sitting there dreaming, not in misery, but in infinite 
content. Her happiness was soft, luxurious, serene. 

It was with the same slow contentment that she 
saw him. She accepted him into her landscape rather 
than greeted him. She neither wanted him nor dis¬ 
liked his presence. He was just there, part of the 
niceness of everything. 

“I was just dreaming,” she smiled. “Pm doing 
a lot of that, you know.” 


175 


SIMPLES 


“You looked as though you were enjoying it.” 

“I was,” she said softly, her eyes on the sea. “This 
has been quite the happiest holiday Pve ever spent.” 

“And reading, too,” he said, looking down at her 
book of poems. 

“Pm going back to it, I feel so steady and settled 
now, Alban, so comfortable. Pm feeling luscious. 
Books and everything are fitting in again.” 

“And what’s Edwin doing?” he asked. 

“Edwin?” she asked, as though wondering why 
he put the question. 

“Will he be along here presently?” 

“Edwin’s gone home,” she laughed, as though he 
had made a stupid mistake. “He went home three 
days ago.” 

“I didn’t know that ,” he said. 

She stared at him, and then she laughed again, “I 
suppose we did forget to tell you.” 

Her tone said, “We forgot everything except each 
other.” 

“I suppose he’ll be coming down again.” 

“I suppose so,” she said quite indifferently, as 
though Edwin was so certain a thing now that it mat¬ 
tered not at all whether he came down or not. 

“Sure to,” said Alban. “You’ve got a month 
more here.” 

She was staring dreamily, indolently, out over the 
slow-slurring sea. “What was that?” she said pres¬ 
ently. 

“You have a month more here,” he said again, not 
quite certain she was attending even then. 

176 


SIMPLES 


“Oh, no,” she answered, “six weeks.” Again her 
gaze grew delicate and vague. He realised that she 
did not particularly want him there. He rose and 
said he must get into Iamouth now. She smiled 
vaguely at him, did not bid him stop—did not sug¬ 
gest he should come to their place to tea, did not 
offer any further meeting. 

Turning when he reached the road, he saw she was 
back in her dreams and had probably forgotten she 
had been speaking to him. 

vii 

Four days later he caught sight of her swinging 
along the road over the cliff. Making sure that she 
was coming to the Farm he went down his own small 
roadway to meet her. 

He saw her through the trees before he reached 
his gate, and stopped for a moment, hidden from 
her, because he thought her actions strange. 

She was standing in the main road by his gate, and 
she seemed to be hesitating whether to come in or 
go on walking. Twice she took a step towards the 
gate, and twice turned away. He could see inde¬ 
cision and a sort of stubbornness warring in her face. 
Then, just as he thought she was coming up to the 
Farm, she swung about with a resolute gesture and 
continued her walk along the road. He sprang 
across an angle of his ground and was standing high 
on a bank behind his private hedge as she came by. 
177 


SIMPLES 


“Hallo, Gilda,” he cried. “Cutting the Farm 
dead?” 

She looked up at him first with a sort of anxiety, 
and then with an affectation of boldness. 

“I am, Pm afraid,” she cried back in a too com¬ 
radely voice. “Pm off on a long, slogging ‘think’ 
walk. I nearly did come in, though.” 

“It would have interrupted the think?” 

“Horribly!” she laughed. 

“Then Pd better not offer to come, too?” 

She seemed to hang indecisive for a moment, then 
“No, I think not. You notice I was tempted, but I 
feel that this has got to be all me with me.” 

“I understand,” he said. “I suppose you haven’t 
noticed that you have neglected the herbs lately?” 

“I have, terribly,” she answered a trifle too earn¬ 
estly. “I feel so mean about it. But I don’t seem 
to have been able to do anything but sit and purr 
on the cliff.” 

“Oh, well, purring is a happy sort of condition.” 

“Yes,” she laughed. “How are things?” 

“Regular and in order,” he laughed back. “No 
complaints, if no particular profit in sight. But I’ve 
done what I set out to do. Very shortly now, a few 
weeks in fact, I shall be able to leave the place in 
charge of my foreman and go back to Earlhampton. 
Pm . . .” 

But he saw she was not interested at all. She had 
shown a polite, blank face all the time he spoke. 
Only at the word Earlhampton did she waken . . . 

“How is everybody at Earlhampton?” she asked. 
178 


SIMPLES 


“More or less the same. But you’ve heard all 
the news from Edwin?” 

Alban said it as a matter of conversation, and saw 
no reason why her face should go scarlet at the words. 
She knew that she had been stupid and covered it up 
boldly. 

“Oh, Edwin! ” she said lightly. “I don’t get news 
from Edwin. He is positively the worst letter- 
writer in the world. He says nothing that I want 
him to say.” 

Her tone was at once possessive and vexed. Alban 
had heard numberless wives say much the same thing 
in much the same manner. She went on quickly: “I 
generally get my real and informing letters from 
Rosamund. But I’ve neglected Rosamund shock¬ 
ingly of late—as I’ve neglected everybody. In con¬ 
sequence I’m without a scrap of news and hungry 
for it.” 

Alban had just had a letter from Rosamund. He 
took it from his pocket and dropped it down to her. 
It was a long letter, full of gossip in Rosamund’s 
most incisive and impertinent manner. There were 
one or two things for Gilda to laugh over. Alban 
watched her, waiting for the laugh. It did not come. 
She went through the letter hungrily, swiftly, not 
really reading it so much as searching it for some¬ 
thing. Then she went back and searched again. 
She threw the letter back to Alban with a cheerful, 
conventional expression. Only she was manifestly 
disappointed at something. 

After she had gone Alban wondered what about 
179 


SIMPLES 


the letter had disappointed her. It was only after 
he had read it through again himself that it occurred 
to him that the explanation might be the absence of 
Edwin’s name. Edwin’s name did not figure at 
all, and there was no chronicle of his doings. 

And, yet, could that be the reason? It didn’t fit 
in with Gilda’s happiness. Edwin and she had most 
certainly banished all differences. And Edwin wrote 
to her. She had said that herself. There was no 
reason why she wanted news of Edwin. But she 
had certainly searched for some sort of news that 
was not in the letter. 

viii 

During the next week Alban became aware that 
Gilda was deliberately avoiding him. 

Twice she seemed to turn aside so as not to meet 
him. 

Once, when walking down a hill, he saw her on 
the road on the opposite side of the valley. He 
waved to her. Though she did not make an an¬ 
swering gesture he confidently expected to meet her 
in the wooded bottom of the little valley. Not until 
he had passed through the little wood and started to 
climb the hill, did he realise that she must have left 
the road and plunged through the trees out of sight. 

Had that been an accident? Or had it been delib¬ 
erate? Of course he could not say. She might not 
have seen him, and there were enticing foot-paths 
along the wooded bottom. He gave her the benefit 
180 


SIMPLES 


of the doubt. Or he thought he did. As a matter 
of fact his impression of her desire to avoid him was 
so strong that he did not even have to resist the im¬ 
pulse to follow and walk with her. He knew she 
did not want him. 

The next occasion was more significant. She had 
been sitting in her old place on the top of the cliff 
outside Iamouth. As he walked down the familiar 
road he felt certain she must have seen him. He 
saw—he was certain even at a distance—the vague 
oval of her face turned towards him. He was also 
confident that she half rose. But she sank back 
again and remained passive, staring out to sea. So 
he had seen her when he went into the dip that hid 
her from his view. When he emerged from the 
dip she was gone. Gone completely—and much 
too swiftly. There was no sign of her walking 
anywhere. 

He knew she was avoiding him. Why, he couldn’t 
say. He was hurt, as he was puzzled. It couldn’t 
be that she had taken a dislike to him, he felt 
certain. It might be, however, that she was acting 
on a hint or a direct word from Edwin. It would 
be like Edwin to put a check to a friendship that 
Alban found so satisfying. Again, it might be a 
mere intuition. Gilda might have felt that the 
brothers were at daggers drawn, and had instinctively 
gone over to Edwin’s side, as she had apparently gone 
completely to him in affection. 

Whatever the reason, Alban’s feet rather dragged 
181 


SIMPLES 


as he entered Iamouth. It had been his intention to 
call on the Conroys, and this new attitude of Gilda’s 
was dismaying. However, reaching the street in 
which they lodged he resolved to go in, if for no 
other reason than to know the worst. 

Old Conroy was not affected, anyhow. He was 
pleased to see Alban and began to develop, quite 
whimsically, a new theory of Utopia in which the 
whole world was to be made contentedly rustic by 
laws which would sentence to death anybody guilty 
of progress. Gilda, he said, was out at the moment, 
but would certainly return for tea. 

The maid who brought the tea surprised them by 
offering apologies for Gilda. Gilda had a bad head¬ 
ache and was lying down. 

“But is she in?” asked old Conroy. “I saw her 
go out myself, and I certainly didn’t see her come 
back.” 

Yes, Gilda was in. She had come in a few min¬ 
utes after the gentleman had arrived. She had gone 
straight to her room. Old Conroy stared at the 
girl with a puzzled and slightly perturbed air. He 
said: “She must have come in by the back door, then? 
She did? Well, that is very extraordinary.” 

The extraordinariness seemed to keep him silent 
during the meal. It seemed to Alban there was 
more than the present happening worrying him. His 
air was withdrawn, vague, perturbed, puzzled. 

Towards the end of tea he shot a glance under 
his brows at the young man. “You and Gilda are 
182 


SIMPLES 


not at war are you?” His light tone masked a 
deeper feeling. 

Alban told him no; that he was under the im¬ 
pression that he and Gilda were good friends. The 
answer instead of helping old Conroy seemed to 
harry him the more. 

He said suddenly, while lighting a cigarette, 
“Hmm! and it’s all well between her and that 
brother of yours, eh?” 

“Good Lord,” said Alban. “What do you mean?” 

“Lovers 5 quarrels,” jerked old Conroy. 

“I don’t think that’s so—now. I should say they 
were on the very best of terms.” 

“So should I,” murmured old Conroy. “So 
should I. I should have said they were getting 
along better than before.” He finished lighting his 
cigarette. He sighed, shrugged, smiled whimsi¬ 
cally. “The young!” he said. “The imponderable 
young! They mystify all over fifty. Best leave 
them alone, I suppose.” 

Alban hammered the whole matter out on his 
walk back. But there was nothing definite to be got 
out of it save that Gilda meant to avoid him. That 
might be Edwin’s fault. That might be her own 
choosing. Whatever the reason, the fact was there. 
Gilda did not want to meet him. 

It hurt. No question that it hurt. Its hurt occu¬ 
pied his mind more than anything else. He paid 
very little attention to old Conroy’s vague uneasi¬ 
ness. Old Conroy, outside exact science, was al¬ 
ways vague. 

183 


SIMPLES 


The hurt was the thing. He’d miss not merely 
Gilda’s visits and their walks and her letters, but 
also the feeling that she was interested in him and 
his work. He realised how stimulating, how sup¬ 
porting that interest had been. Without it he felt 
rather dreary and blank. Even the Farm, such a 
fine and satisfactory thing only a week ago, appeared 
now entirely unsatisfying. 

In this mood it seemed to him that he saw the 
Farm dispassionately, and as it actually was—as Os¬ 
wald saw it. It was a waste. It was chucking 
money down a sink. He reviewed all he had done, 
and saw that it was bad. There wasn’t a real living 
in it. After all that work the place wouldn’t pay 
a profit for years. Not for years. It wasn’t even 
going to pay its way for a couple of years at least. 
By scratching and scraping he could just about get 
together the wages of his foremen and hands, and 
that was all. Oswald and his mother had been right. 
There was nothing in the Farm. It was an ex¬ 
pensive fad. 

He was acutely miserable. He became worse 
when he received a letter from Rosamund a few 
weeks later. One paragraph in the letter was a 
real affront. It gave the news that the Conroys had 
returned to Earlhampton. 

Alban was thoroughly upset by that. He had 
not expected them to leave for two weeks. They 
had gone without even letting him know. They 
had packed up and left as casually as though he was 
184 


SIMPLES 


not within a hundred miles of their neighbourhood. 
They had not even sent a post-card. He had had 
to hear the news second-hand from his sister. 

That was the worst shock Gilda had dealt him. 
For a time it upset him so much that he could not 
believe it was true. Out of this state of mind he 
evolved the idea that something untoward had hap¬ 
pened. Some imperative business had called old 
Conroy home suddenly—or perhaps he had fallen 
ill. He went into Iamouth to find out. 

He found the landlady sour and hostile. 

The Conroys had defrauded her out of two weeks’ 
letting ^ and it was that young woman’s fault. All 
her fault. The old man was comfortable enough. 
He was quite willing to stay on for the full time, 
but she wouldn’t let him. On at him day in and 
day out- to go back home, she had been. Said she 
was tired of the place; said there was something 
she wanted to do at home. Said she was bored, fed- 
up! Always at him, she had been, and he, peace- 
loving old gent, had given in. And they had gone 
off in a hurry. 

“No, it wasn’t no business calling him back, an’ 
it wasn’t no illness, not of ’is, anyhow,” said the 
woman, with a weighted and venomous look, “tho’ I 
might think twice before I sed that about that gerL 
I ain’t so simple as I seem, I ain’t. It was all the 
gerl’s doing. She was in a bustin’ ’urry to get back 
’ome, an’ the old gent simply had to give in.” And 
they had gone, all of a day. Nothing was too quick 
185 


SIMPLES 


for her. No, they had left no message. . . . “She 
’adn’t ’ad any time for thinking of messages. . . .” 
Alban stalked back to the Farm coldly, blankly. 
“Oh, well,” he kept on saying, “it doesn’t matter.” 
He could think of nothing else. It didn’t mat¬ 
ter. Nothing mattered. 


186 


Qhapter IX 


i 

F OUR weeks of hard work on the Farm with the 
mind blank and with no particular news. Then 
suddenly two queer letters. 

Oswald’s letter really was startling. Oswald sud¬ 
denly affable and optimistic instead of curt. Oswald 
unexpectedly recognising that all was going well 
with the world and Kent Drugs; admitting that 
things were moving along more smoothly than the 
mind of Oswald would have given them credit for; 
that business was settled, affairs all in order, and 
needing no particular anxiety or attention—Kent 
Drugs, in fact, in need of no special driving or keying 
up. Unusual all that in a mind addicted to the joys 
of anticipating bankruptcy. 

Unusual, more than unusual, his sudden affection 
for the Herb Farm. Alban’s report of the Herb 
Farm had given Oswald comfort and pleasure. Alban 
was obviously on the right lines with the Herb 
Farm. Alban was apparently on a good thing after 
all. Developed along the lines suggested and with 
the personal care Alban was giving to it the Herb 
Farm must in time become a good property, an asset. 
The samples of Poppy, Aconite and Belladonna sent 
were encouraging. Alban was obviously improving 

187 


SIMPLES 


the strains there. They were ahead of old MoapY 
cultivation, as much as old Moap had been ahead of 
Continental growing. There was no doubt in Os¬ 
wald’s mind that Alban’s personal work, Alban’s per¬ 
sonal supervision, was doing wonders, and this being 
so—and here was the queer point—Oswald was quite 
certain that Alban would be unwise to leave the 
Farm. In fact, he thought he should not leave it 
for three, four, perhaps more months. 

Surprising Oswald should say that. Rather more 
surprising that he should insist on it. 

There was no doubt that he insisted on it. He 
came back to the point several times, emphasised the 
peculiar need of Alban’s presence at the Farm at 
this critical juncture. “Is it critical?” Alban 
grinned. “How does Oswald know it’s critical?” 
Oswald made it plain that Alban was not needed at 
all at the Factory. Yes, Alban had better stay on 
another three or four months at Margaretting. The 
letter concluded by assuming that that was what 
Alban would do. 

Alban was amused at first and then suspicious. It 
was a mean attitude to take up when old Oswald was 
trying to be decent, was being generous, in fact, but 
he couldn’t help himself. His knowledge of Os¬ 
wald, his instincts about Oswald made him mutter, 
“What’s he driving at? What’s the game behind 
it?” 

He couldn’t see what was behind it. He could 
see no practical reason for anything underhand. No 
reason at all. He might have thought it something 
188 


SIMPLES 


to do with his partnership in Kent Drugs, some¬ 
thing to do with keeping him out of the partnership, 
only he did not think of the partnership at all. It 
had been definitely set aside when he came down 
to Margaretting. It would not really occur to him 
again until he got back to the Factory. And no 
other reason occurred to him. On the face of it, 
Oswald’s was a genuine offer—and yet he asked 
himself, “What’s behind it?” 

That feeling, “What’s behind it?” made him carry 
the letter about with him for three days deciding 
what his answer should be. He hadn’t decided when 
Rosamund’s letter came. 

Rosamund’s letter was not less queer than Os¬ 
wald’s—and it was more disturbing. 

Rosamund said in her frank, ringing fashion: 
“Shouldn’t be at all surprised if Oswald or Mother 
—or both—wrote to you to tell you to stay on at 
Margaretting. . . . They want you out of the 
way. . . . There is trouble between Edwin and 
Gilda, real trouble, I mean. . . . Frankly, I don’t 
like the way the wind is setting. I really do believe 
you ought to come home. . . .” 

Come home—why should he come home because 
his brother and Gilda were in difficulties? He 
caught another sentence. . . . 

“Of course, I’m making trouble for myself, and, 
having adopted the pose of being outside all this sort 
of thing, I feel that I am an ass. . . . But there’s 
rather too much of the you in me for complete, stoic 
calm. And I’m terribly fond of Gilda. And the 
189 


SIMPLES 


atmosphere is bad—bad. ... Pm certain our fam¬ 
ily is not going to be decent towards Gilda.” 

Alban sat still for half an hour, staring out over 
his view, not seeing it. 

Abruptly he took out Oswald’s letter, held it in 
his left hand, while he held Rosamund’s in his right. 
It was as though he were balancing one against the 
other. And he was. 

He was balancing Oswald’s apparent generosity 
against Rosamund’s truth. He was balancing the 
whole attitude of Oswald and his mother against the 
hard facts. 

In that moment he saw nearly everything. He 
saw the real meaning of the Herb Farm—to them. 
He saw it through their eyes, not as a speculative 
venture, not as a fad of his, but as something that 
kept him out of harm’s way, something that shut 
him up. 

It was plain. Their real opinion of the Farm 
had never altered. It was to them a folly, a waste 
of time and money; it was a dangerous lunacy. They 
still thought that. They had not changed as he had 
thought. They had merely seen the opportunity 
the Farm gave for removing him from Earlhampton 
and from the neighbourhood of Edwin when things 
became difficult and dangerous. 

It was plain. The whole history of his dealings 
with the Farm proved it. Each occasion he had 
come to the Farm, had been sent to the Farm, coin¬ 
cided with a big row about Edwin. The Farm had 
190 


SIMPLES 


been a means of eliminating him as a danger to 
Edwin, to the family. 

He saw it. He saw more. He saw why Gilda 
had behaved so queerly in the last days of her holi¬ 
day. Edwin’s work, of course. Exactly what Ed¬ 
win had done did not matter, the thing was that it 
was his work. Alban had a vague feeling that he 
could reconstruct the happenings down here. He 
felt that Edwin had deliberately played with Gilda, 
played on her fears. All the moves of that game 
had been deliberate—his delay in coming down, his 
bringing the Hogarth woman with him. . . . All 
deliberate. Why? One would have to be Edwin 
to understand why. Its motive was some queer, de¬ 
based pleasure in torment, perhaps—or perhaps it 
had been a plan to hit at him, Alban. That might 
be it. Edwin knew how intimate Gilda was with 
Alban, how she valued his companionship, so he had 
deliberately reduced her to a state of helpless mis¬ 
ery and fear in order absolutely to sway her. And 
then—and then he had made love to her again, 
knowing how powerful, how tremendous were her 
reactions. And when he had got command of her 
completely by love, he had seen to it that she made 
a final break with his brother. 

That explained a good deal. Not all, but a good 
deal. It explained why Gilda had avoided him, and 
why she had left Iamouth without even the courtesy 
of a farewell post-card. 

With a savage gesture, Alban tore Oswald’s letter 
191 


SIMPLES 


across and across, and flung it from him. “That for 
your damned treachery,” he shouted. 

Sitting, thinking, he read Rosamund’s letter 
through again and made up his mind. He would 
go home. He would face the thing properly this 
time. He would do what ought to have been done 
before—and he would not be put off. No, this 
time, by God, he would not be put off by Oswald or 
his mother or all the tribes of Kents. 

He caught a sentence of Rosamund’s: “Go care¬ 
fully, old thing. It’s dawning on me that Oswald’s 
heaviness cloaks a devilish lot of slow, fat cunning. 
He can make an awful lot of trouble for you. Go 
slow . . .” 

He thought it over. He’d go slow. He’d be 
cunning, too. He wrote a friendly and quite inno¬ 
cent letter to Oswald. He showed how pleased he 
was at Oswald’s praise and appreciation. He en¬ 
thused about the Farm. It was good of Oswald to 
make the offer of a further stay here—but it wasn’t 
necessary. In fact, it was less than necessary. He 
had indeed made all his arrangements, and they 
were so far settled that he was actually starting back 
to Earlhampton on the morrow. There was no 
use in changing those plans now. It would upset 
things and cause needless expense. He hoped to 
arrive home about tea-time, when he would explain 
things more fully. 

He posted the letter and began to pack, and after 
packing had a long talk with his foreman. He had 
192 


SIMPLES 


spiked Oswald’s guns, he thought. Oswald might 
not like that letter, but he could do nothing. 

He was not quite right about that. As he walked 
to the station, he saw on the road ahead, as he had 
seen Gilda not so long ago, the figure of a telegraph 
boy on a bicycle. He realised what that might mean. 
As Gilda had vanished into the bushes at his ap¬ 
proach, so he jumped into hiding and watched the 
boy free-wheeling by. 

He was quite right in his surmise. Late that 
night he received a telegram re-directed from the 
Farm. It was from Oswald, telling him on no ac¬ 
count to return to Earlhampton. 

He had been wise to avoid that boy, he realised 
grimly, as he tore up the message and threw it into 
the fire of his old bedroom in Earlhampton. 

ii 

The Watchkeep Street atmosphere was thick, 
anxious, and guarded. Both Oswald and his mother 
were curiously on the defence, as though they feared 
to fire his suspicions by saying too much. 

Oswald did say, “Didn’t you get my wire, Alban?” 

“What wire?” asked Alban, as reticent as they. 
Oswald hesitated, wondering whether, the harm 
being done, he had better disclose the purpose of the 
wire. Mrs. Kent said, “Oswald wired you not to 
come home.” 

“You don’t want me at home?” said Alban, 
evenly. He would give them their chance to be 
193 


SIMPLES 


straight, anyhow. For a moment he thought his 
mother would be candid. She looked at him quickly, 
but what she saw checked her. She was power¬ 
fully aware that this was a new Alban, and she was 
a little frightened of him. He seemed leaner, big¬ 
ger, stronger. He was calmer than of old, but it 
was the calmness of added power, not less. She 
felt that he could give to his fads, his ideas, his 
strange ways of looking at things a more concen¬ 
trated force. In the old days there had been a 
wildness in him as well as in his ideas that made it 
not too difficult to defeat and fool him. But now 
she doubted whether she could do that. He had 
such a quiet, steady, undeviating air about him. 

She said indignantly: “Don’t talk such nonsense, 
Alban. As if I should ever deny a boy of mine 
his home. It wasn’t that.” She was herself won¬ 
dering what it might be. She remembered Aunt 
Heppie. “We had arranged to give Aunt Heppie 
your room for a month.” 

“You’ve asked her?” he said, his eyes unpleasantly 
questioning. 

“I can put her off,” she retorted ambiguously. 

“Or I could go into lodgings,” he said grimly. 

“Alban!” she cried, really affronted, really angry. 
She drove back at him in her way. “Is that what 
the country has taught you?” she said with resigned 
maternal bitterness. 

“You seem to want me to stay longer and learn 
worse,” he answered. 

“I don’t know what to make of you,” she sighed. 
194 


SIMPLES 


“To hear you talk you’d think I was your enemy 
instead of your own mother.” 

Alban said nothing. He wondered whether 
mothers weren’t sometimes enemies. He felt her 
antagonism, but meaning to go slow, meaning, above 
all, to recognise that he was her son, he was hard¬ 
ened by her deception. He knew she was trying 
to deceive him with the mechanical determination 
of long habit. 

He would have known it decisively if he had heard 
her speaking to Oswald about ten minutes later. She 
had told Alban she did not know what to make 
of him. She told Oswald: “He’s worse than ever, 
Oswald. Going to that detestable Farm has simply 
hardened him. He’s had time to brood over all 
those impossible ideas of his. I knew he would.” 

Oswald passed that. He had long ago realised 
that women, mother-women anyhow, had minds that 
worked in inexplicable and unreasonable mental pro¬ 
cesses. It was absolutely no good trying to cope 
with the clear, final falsehoods that issued from them 
as logic and fact. It was no good telling his mother, 
for instance, that she had been the one responsible 
for sending Alban to Moap’s Farm. 

All he answered was, “He seems soberer, steadier 
to me.” 

“He is,” she cried. “That’s the danger.” 

He shrugged his shoulders, he couldn’t be ex¬ 
pected to follow reasoning like that. Mrs. Kent 
went on with a wail: “He’s going to be very dan¬ 
gerous, Oswald. He’s become a fanatic. He’s his 
19 5 


SIMPLES 


father all over again—but different.” She didn’t 
dare say stronger. She said: “Not so reasonable. 
He’ll stop at nothing.” 

“Well, then,” said Oswald, “what are we going 
to do?” 

She cried: “Oh, what have I done to have such 
a son? What have I done?” 

“Do you mean,” asked the puzzled Oswald, “Ed¬ 
win or Alban?” 

“Edwin, too,” she answered. “Edwin is behav¬ 
ing disgracefully. I’m shocked and pained at 
Edwin.” 

“He is a rotten little beast,” said Oswald. “Alban 
was so far right there . . .” 

“Oswald!” cried Mrs. Kent. “Are you taking 
sides against your own brother?” 

“Oh, I don’t mean what Alban means. But the 
way Edwin is behaving towards that girl. . . . It’s 
blackguardly. I can’t understand why she allows it.” 

“That,” said Mrs. Kent, suddenly prim, “is what 
I feel. No nice girl would demean herself by cling¬ 
ing to a man in such a fashion.” 

“Hang it all,” said Oswald, in protest. “They 
are engaged. She has a right, you know.” 

Mrs. Kent’s lips merely tightened, and she looked 
with the pity of a woman-wise mother at her inno¬ 
cent son. 

iii 

“I don’t know whether I love you or hate you for 
coming,” said Rosamund, her long, slim, narrow- 
196 


SIMPLES 


shinned figure sprawled as shamelessly as a boy’s on 
the couch of the attic she called her studio. 

Alban sat down, the back of the chair under his 
elbows: “What’s wrong between Edwin and Gilda?” 
he asked evenly. 

Rosamund, with an effort that sent her slim legs 
waving in the air, heaved herself upright. Her 
eyes narrowed, analysing Alban. “I’ve got you,” 
she said. “I’ve been worrying since you came in 
to know where the new ‘something’ in you came 
from. You’re Father—the big, horrible, cruelly 
accurate enlargement in Mother’s room. Yes, you’re 
Father, with your mouth and chin in better drawing. 
His mouth and chin rather explains Mother. I sup¬ 
pose it’s Mother herself who’s given you the extra. 
That’s rather funny—ironic. . . . She’s given 
Father, as it were, the things that will beat her in 
the end!” 

“What’s wrong between Edwin and Gilda?” said 
Alban, as evenly as before. 

Rosamund looked at him, snuggled back: “The 
verdict is, I’m glad you came.” Her keen, sharp, 
determinedly perverse little face abruptly softened 
into tragic lines. “Everything’s wrong, I think, 
Alban. Edwin’s practically finished with her.” 

Silence, Alban leaving Rosamund to speak. 

She went on: “That’s it, simply finished with her. 
Its gone out—poof! There was a time when there 
was something in her that held him. It’s gone.” 

“Since he went down to Iamouth?” 

She nodded: “That’s when it went. That was 
197 


SIMPLES 


the finish. When he came back it, whatever it was, 
was wiped out. She was wiped out. Done with. 
Chucked!” 

Again Alban waited. 

“It was all over at once. There wasn’t even a 
period of pretence. He went straight from her to 
this Mrs. Hogarth. He actually cut his holiday 
short to spend a couple of days with Mrs. Hogarth. 
I don’t know whether she knows that, but it’s a 
fact. And he spends every available minute with 
the damned woman.” 

She stared at Alban, who sat, brown, lean, im¬ 
mobile, watching her. 

“Alban,” she cried, “don’t be so statuesque. Don’t 
you understand what I am saying? He goes to Mrs. 
Hogarth. Never to Gilda. He has never set foot 
inside the Conroys’ house since he came back from 
Iamouth.” 

“Certain of that?” asked Alban. His voice was 
so even that Rosamund threw a scared glance at him. 

“Gilda told me herself—that’s the state she has 
got into. She is not one of your cheap, confide-all 
sort. She says little enough now. But she’s been 
driven as far as that.” She waited for him to speak. 
He did not. She went on. “I guessed something 
was coming along even while Gilda was still at 
Iamouth. Not merely because Edwin went running 
after that woman, but because Gilda began writing to 
me. She’d dropped it, you know. But suddenly 
she started again, a long chatty letter which tried to 
disguise the fact that she wanted news of Edwin.” 
198 


SIMPLES 


“He hadn’t been writing?” 

“I think not, but she said nothing. From the way 
he was occupying his time I should say he’d not 
sent her even a postcard.” 

“When did Gilda begin writing again? Some¬ 
where about—let me see—the 22nd of August?” 

“Let me think. It was either after or before The 
Sketch bought that drawing . . . Yes, somewhere 
about the 22nd.” 

Alban knew it. It must have been just after the 
time he had thrown Rosamund’s letter down to Gilda 
in the road, the letter she had searched for news of 
Edwin. And yet she had seemed so happy up to 
that, so settled in her love for Edwin— 

“Go on,” he said. 

“That first letter was a hinting letter. The ones 
that came after weren’t. She began to ask point- 
blank for news of Edwin . . . And it got rather 
frantic, Alban, because, you see, I had to hold her off 
a bit, thanks to the way Edwin was behaving. Then 
she came at me hard. Insisted on plain facts. Was 
Edwin seeing this Hogarth woman? Was he visit¬ 
ing her often? That sort of thing. It gave me cold 
shivers. I didn’t even know she knew about the 
Hogarth creature.” 

“But you told her what she wanted?” 

“Had to. It wasn’t any good lying, and I find 
lying hardish anyhow. I had to answer and it had to 
be the truth. Also I thought it best . . . What 

would you have done, Alban?” 

“Exactly as you did, Rosamund. You and I can’t 
199 


SIMPLES 


help ourselves . . . And then she came back 

here?” 

“Yes, the next thing was that she was here. Start¬ 
ling! None of us expected her of course. Edwin 
didn’t, either . . .” 

“Ah, she saw him.” 

“Walked right in here on him. We had just 
finished tea. She—she was rather fine about it, you 
know, Alban. Reading between the lines of her 
letters, I said to myself as she came in, as I saw 
Edwin go sago-colour and redden, and then squint 
down at his hands in that way he has, ‘Here’s the 
hell of a scene.’ But it was nothing like that. She 
came in as though it was the most ordinary thing in 
the world, as though she had just dropped in in 
passing, you know. She sat down among us and 
chatted about Iamouth as though nothing was the 
matter at all. It was rather fine, brave . . 

When I think of her sick heart . . . You know, 
Alban, I don’t think Pd have the guts to carry it off 
like that.” 

Alban looked at her, smiling a little. “Gilda’s 
sort do not make scenes,” he said. “Go on. What 
happened next?” 

“Edwin slithered out of the house.” Alban 
looked up with suddenly narrowed eyes. “Fact, 
Alban. He just did that. He walked out of the 
room—casually, as though he was going to get a box 
of matches, and he didn’t come back. He just 
slimed right out of the house. We didn’t know he 
200 


SIMPLES 


was gone until half an hour later. Isn’t he the prime 
hog?” 

Alban’s face was congested, the hands on the back 
of the chair were clenched. But he didn’t speak, 
didn’t care to speak. He nodded his head for Rosa¬ 
mund to go on. 

“We all saw it of course, the whole room-full of 
us. Gilda stood up to go, and Mother, you bet it 
was Mother, said, ‘Going, dear? Where’s Edwin?’ 
I thought I’d better look for Edwin, and the girl 
told me he’d gone out. I had to bring that back.” 

“And Mother?” 

“Mother was almost ashamed that one of her boys 
should do such a thing.” 

“And Gilda?” 

“Oh, Alban, I love Gilda,” cried Rosamund, 
suddenly sniffling. “You’d have thought that it 
absolutely didn’t matter at all, until you looked into 
her eyes.” (Rosamund made a barefaced clutch for 
a wisp of a handkerchief and shamelessly used it.) 
“Her eyes, Alban, just tore me to little pieces,” she 
said, explaining herself. “I didn’t know anybody 
could be so—so tortured.” She swung with abrupt 
ferocity on Alban. “You’re swine, you men, swine. 
Why should a woman go through that for you? 
Why should a woman like Gilda love a hog like 
Edwin like that?” 

Alban got up and walked stiffly to the big window 
looking out over the roofs of Earlhampton. He 
stared for a minute. Then: 

“But she does,” he said. 

201 


SIMPLES 


There was a long silence behind him. A very 
long silence. Then out of it the voice of Rosamund, 
rising vaguely and with a queerly speculative intona¬ 
tion: 

“Yes—I suppose she does.” 

Alban turning, leaning against the window, 
answered the tone rather than the words: “Suppose?” 

“Well, all the concrete facts indicate it,” she 
answered, speaking slowly as though reasoning with 
herself. “She, to put it crudely, won’t leave him 
alone, won’t give him up.” 

“Explain that.” 

“Well, he won’t go to see her, you know, so she 
comes round here. She comes round here nearly 
every day trying to see him. She’s not invited, in 
fact. As you’ll find the family is getting a little 
sniffy about it.” 

“Damn them!” said Alban, thickly. 

“Damn them!” said Rosamund. “She even tries 
to meet him outside, has once or twice, and I know 
she writes to him, here and at the works. She won’t 
let him go ... So I suppose she’s in love with 
him. But it’s queer.” 

He came and sat in front of her: “How—queer?” 
he demanded angrily. 

“Well, that she—she should go on like that when 
he’s so obviously finished with her.” 

“But they’re engaged. Edwin has no right to 
throw over the girl he is engaged to for a whim, 
without explanations . . .” 

202 


SIMPLES 


“There have been explanations. She’s seen him, 
I’ve told you, talked to him alone, twice . . .” 

“Yes?” he demanded eagerly. 

“The only result, as far as I can see, is that she 
cried herself silly for days, and Edwin went off for 
long visits to Mrs. Hogarth . . .” 

“Nothing about breaking off the engagement?” 

“Nothing at all—that’s the strangeness of it.” 

“I don’t think it’s strange at all. If they are 
engaged . . .” 

She stared at him callously, with the sharp candour 
of youth. “You do know it’s queer, Alban,” she 
said. “You know it’s queer that a girl like Gilda 
should even want to hold a man when she knows he 
no longer loves her. Some girls might do it. Gilda’s 
not that type. You and I know Gilda and we’d 
expect her to break it off—and she doesn’t.” 

Alban said: “I know . . . That’s true . . . 
But I don’t understand these things very much. Per¬ 
haps she loves him too much.” 

“Will that do?” asked Rosamund. “My idea is 
that if she loved him as much as that, she’d willingly 
sacrifice herself, give him up.” 

“What else can be behind it then?” cried Alban, 
irritably. “She must have a reason for insisting that 
the engagement goes on?” 

“I’m there too,” she smiled wanly. “Just beating 
my head against a wall like you.” 

Alban said presently: “Well, then, do you think 
she really does love him?” 

“Haven’t I been trying to get at that all this 
203 


SIMPLES 


time?” she said. “I don’t know any more than you. 
I think she must, on facts, and on facts I sometimes 
think she doesn’t. You know from some things she 
says I get an idea she detests him, hates him.” 

“Hates?” 

“Of course, that’s nothing to go by,” she mused. 
“Hate’s only a sort of by-product of love. But I 
don’t know, from things she said, or the way she 
said them perhaps, I got the feeling that she knows 
him now for the dirty-minded little beast he is.” 

“What did she say?” 

“In actual words? I don’t know. Perhaps noth¬ 
ing definite. I said it was a sort of impression she 
gave me. It was as though she’d found him out.” 

“And yet still wants to marry him.” 

“It is absolutely mystifying.” 

“Doesn’t she even talk straight to you, Rosamund? 
You’re her most intimate friend. Surely she would 
talk to you.” 

“But you know she wouldn’t,” said Rosamund, 
smiling. “Not about things like that. She’ll never 
wear her heart on her sleeve. I just pick up im¬ 
pressions, and can see the hell in her eyes. She’ll 
fight this out alone.” 

“She oughtn’t to, not against a rat like Edwin. 
And she won’t. I’m going to see her.” 

“I wonder whether that will help. But it’ll mean 
trouble. The family’s already arrayed for a fight.” 

“The family? How do they all take it? Mother 
—Oswald . . . ?” 


204: 


SIMPLES 


“Watching neutrals, but already arming against 
the outside.” 

“My son and brother, right or wrong, I love thee 
still . . , ?” 

“Yes, they’re solid Edwin.” 

“And about the Hogarth woman? When I was at 
home last Oswald swore that he was putting his foot 
down in the matter of the Hogarth woman.” 

“I daresay it’s still down. I know he’s fumed at 
Edwin, but Edwin doesn’t care. The powers of Kent 
Drugs no longer awe him. The Hogarth lady has 
an income of ten thousand a year, my boy.” 

“My God,” said Alban, “the fellow makes me 
sick.” 

“Sick!” said Rosamund, in a sudden, shrewish 
voice. “I could kill him with my own hands—and 
enjoy it. And by the same token I can’t understand 
for the life of me why Gilda is so keen to marry 
him.” 

“I can’t understand it either. But I’ll see her. 
Where’s Edwin?” 

“Brackenhurst,” said Rosamund. “Where else?” 


20S 


Qhapter X 


i 

M RS. KENT had been watching Alban warily 
over the untiring industry of her knitting 
needles. She said immediately as he rose: 

“Going out, Alban?” 

“Yes,” said Alban, who knew he had been watched. 
“On your first evening home?” This in faintly 
hurt protest. 

“Yes,” said Alban. 

Mrs. Kent, irritated and a little anxious, said 
tartly, “It must be somebody very important to drag 
you out on your first night.” 

Alban hesitated a minute on the lip of diplomacy 
and then decided his mother had better have the 
square truth. 

“Pm going to call on the Conroys,” he said. 

“I should have thought you saw enough of them 
when they were at Iamouth,” she said sharply. 

“No more than usual,” he answered evenly. And 
then he decided to let her have further truth. “As 
a matter of fact, I haven’t been in touch with Gilda 
for seven or eight weeks.” 

“Gilda!” said Mrs. Kent, and her plump lips 
pinched inward. She looked at her knitting, and 
206 


SIMPLES 


said gravely, softly, “I don’t know that you ought to 
call on Gilda, Alban.” 

“Why not?” asked Alban, evenly. 

“Must you always have a reason?” she asked 
sharply. 

“I must in this case,” he said. “Mr. Conroy and 
Gilda are very old friends, and I must know why 
you don’t want me to call.” 

“Don’t want you,” cried Mrs. Kent. “What a 
strange tone you do adopt, Alban. I was not saying 
you should not call. Call by all means. I was only 
hinting that perhaps it would be more tactful not to.” 

“And even that doesn’t give me a reason,” said 
Alban, smiling. Really, his mother carried evasion 
to the height of art. “Why should I tactfully keep 
away? Had a tiff with old Conroy, Mother?” 

“Don’t be silly, Alban.” 

“Gilda and Edwin the reason, then?” 

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Kent, tenderly, “that is 
the reason.” She saw that for this exasperating son 
of hers this wasn’t reason enough. She ended on a 
sigh. “There are difficulties there, Alban.” 

“Have they quarrelled, Mother?” 

“Oh, no,” cried Mrs. Kent, losing her diplomacy 
didn’t realise that his persistence was unpleasant. “I 
don’t think there has actually been a quarrel.” 

“Well, what then? They’re still engaged, aren’t 
they?” Alban was determined to force her hand. 

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Kent, trying not to be 
angry. “I really don’t know anything about them. 
All I can say is that since their holidays at Iamouth 
207 


SIMPLES 


there seems to have been a coldness between them. 
They see less of each other.” 

Alban said quite deliberately, “You mean Gilda 
is cold? Gilda refuses to see Edwin?” 

“Oh no,” cried Mrs. Kent, losing her diplomacy 
at the mere thought that any girl would dare to cold- 
shoulder a son of hers. “Oh, no, quite the other way 
about. It is Edwin who seems to have changed. She 
is willing enough to see Edwin; far too willing— 
coming round here at all times, whether she is asked 
or not.” 

“So,” said Alban, incisively, “the fault is 
Edwin’s.” 

Mrs. Kent realised that she had been out-gen- 
eralled; also that a son of hers was being held up 
in a bad light. 

“Why must you always see faults in your 
brother?” she demanded. “I don’t know anything, 
mind you, but I think—that is, it isn’t unlikely that 
these young people have come to realise—well, that 
they’re not exactly suited. We’ve always had a little 
doubt. You yourself had those doubts too, Alban, 
as to whether it was an ideal match. Well, perhaps 
they are realising it isn’t. I say nothing; I know 
nothing, mind you, but it seems to me that perhaps 
that is what is happening. If so, surely it is not a 
fault—it’s wisdom, really.” 

“Does Gilda feel like this, do you think, Mother?” 

“Gilda!” she cried angrily. Then more diplo¬ 
matically: “I don’t know anything about Gilda. I 
confess I don’t understand these modern girls at all.” 

208 


SIMPLES 


“Does that mean that Gilda does not think like this 
at all? That she is still of the old opinion about the 
engagement, that it is Edwin alone who wants to get 
out of it?” 

“You make use of hateful expressions,” cried Mrs. 
Kent. “I don’t know whether Edwin wants the 
engagement ended or not. Why you shouldn’t sup¬ 
port your own brother in something you yourself feel 
to be the wisest thing, I can’t understand.” 

“Because they’re still engaged. If that is so, then 
it is for Gilda to say whether it is or is not for the 
best, whether things are to go on or stop.” 

“Oh, Gilda! ” she rapped out again in scorn. “You 
can be sure that Gilda will not want a change.” 

“What makes you say that?” 

“You act,” cried Mrs. Kent, trying to stamp down 
her anger, “as though Gilda was more important than 
your own brother.” 

“But isn’t she in this?” asked Alban. “I mean 
not Gilda herself, but the principle she represents. 
It is for the girl to say whether the engagement is to 
end or not.” 

“That may be true enough in many cases. But 
here—” Mrs. Kent’s feelings were uncontrollable— 
“I don’t know. Modern girls seem to have no 
decency, no pride.” 

“You’re saying again that Gilda has some motive 
for keeping Edwin to his word. What do you 
mean?” 

“I won’t have you talk to me like that,” snapped 
the really angry Mrs. Kent. 

209 


SIMPLES 


“Pm only trying to find out,” said Alban. “Twice 
you’ve spoken unpleasantly of Gilda. There must 
be a reason.” 

“Reason!” cried Mrs. Kent. “Haven’t I reason 
for being unpleasant? When a girl comes round 
here hunting the boy, positively hunting him? She 
has no shame. She won’t leave him alone . . . 

She waylays him in the street even. It’s revolting.” 

“Isn’t it because he won’t go round to see her?” 

“That makes it worse,” she cried. “Infinitely 
worse. Where’s her pride? If a young man showed 
me that he had changed his mind, that he was tired 
of me, I should know how to act. / should not de¬ 
mean myself by running after him. If he wanted to 
go I should let him go. But then we had some pride, 
some sense of decency in the old days.” 

If she had left it at that, she might have at least 
silenced Alban with the power of her reasoning. He, 
too, was puzzled at Gilda’s attitude. It was because 
he was puzzled that he was silent. His mother 
thought it was because he was hostile. It made her 
more angry. 

“But, then, I suppose,” she reflected, “I was a 
girl who thought more of my self-respect, of real 
love than of a fine position as the wife of a partner 
in Kent Drugs.” 

“Mother!” cried Alban, shocked and disgusted. 

“Some girls,” continued his uncheckable mother, 
“will put up with anything for the sake of a good 
catch. They have no shame. A rich husband is 
much more to the point than self-respect.” 

210 


SIMPLES 


She stopped, because the stare from Alban’s eyes, 
the disgust in them, overcame even her anger for 
the moment. She glared back at him trying to main¬ 
tain her outraged attitude. 

Alban said slowly, “I never dreamt you were cap¬ 
able of anything so beastly, Mother.” 

“How dare you talk like that to me?” she cried. 
“Has this girl bewitched you too, so that you hate 
your own mother?” 

He moved towards the door. “That,” he said, 
“is beastly too. I’m only trying to get at the bottom 
of this bad business, and you . . .” 

“You get to the bottom of it,” she cried. “Why 
should you?” He shrugged his shoulders. “How 
can you? You’ve got such ridiculous ideas, that you 
can’t see or listen to plain reason. You don’t want 
to listen to reason. You don’t believe me. Well, 
will you explain this girl’s attitude to me in some 
other way? Edwin is obviously not wanting to marry 
her. He shows her plainly in every way what his 
feelings are. He won’t call on her, he won’t see her 
at all, he won’t write to her. He goes off instead to 
another woman ... I don’t like this Mrs. 
Hogarth, but there she is, and Edwin most pointedly 
neglects Gilda Conroy to go to her. All this, in ad¬ 
dition to the fact that they are really not suited to 
each other. And yet, though Edwin has made his 
feelings plain, does the girl break off the engagement 
as any decent girl with a scrap of pride would? She 
doesn’t. She won’t give him up; she won’t leave him 
alone; she pesters him; she hunts him. And why? 

211 


SIMPLES 


Because she does not intend to give up a man of 
Edwin’s money and position.” 

Said Alban sharply: “You mustn’t say that. 
Gilda is not that sort of girl. I’m certain she is not 
that sort of girl.” 

Mrs. Kent’s eyes for a moment held that glare 
with which she said, as she sometimes did of an im¬ 
possible person, “And I could have boxed his ears 
then and there!” She looked ready to box Alban’s 
ears then and there. But suddenly she grew more 
frigidly, more powerfully calm. 

“It is very nice of you to think that, Alban,” she 
said. “It shows your fine feelings. But if she isn’t 
that sort of girl, what sort of girl is she?” 

Alban was silent. 

She went on: “I don’t want to be harsh. In many 
ways I like Gilda. I should have valued her as a 
daughter-in-law. But one must be just. What other 
explanation is there for her attitude? Could, for 
instance, any girl who really loved a man want to 
keep him against his will?” 

Again Alban was silent. The mysteries of Gilda 
and love baffied him. 

“I see you feel as I do,” said Mrs. Kent, 
triumphantly. “If I felt that Gilda really loved 
Edwin . . .” But she saw that that would lead 

to dangerous places. She tried again: “It is because 
I know that it isn’t really a matter of love ... I feel 
that there is another reason. . . . My dear boy, it is 
sweet of you to be chivalrous, but the world, you 
know, is rather more material than you think. And 
212 


SIMPLES 


one gets shocks about even the people one likes.” 
She beamed softly on him; she thought that she was 
winning him with gentle, worldly-wise wisdom. 
And he said immediately: 

“All the same, I am confident that that isn’t 
Gilda’s reason. She’s not that type at all.” 

“Then, in Heaven’s name, what is the reason?” 
asked Mrs. Kent. 

“I don’t know,” he said frowning. “I don’t know. 
Perhaps having been engaged to him she can’t bear 
to give him up.” 

“Isn’t that what I have been saying?” retorted his 
mother. 

“No,” he said. He looked at his mother anxiously, 
saw that he could never explain to her exactly what 
he meant, and broke away. “No,” he repeated, “we 
don’t mean the same things. All I want to say is 
that if Gilda holds to her engagement with Edwin, 
Edwin is in honour bound to go on with it, and we 
are in honour bound to support her.” 

Mrs. Kent made a troubled, hopeless gesture. She 
said: “I’m afraid we shall never get anywhere. We 
had better leave things to work themselves out in 
their own way.” 

ii 

Mr. Conroy was out, and Alban waited in the 
little, vaguely beautiful sitting-room. 

That room, always so contented and charming to 
him in its wistful and tenuous comeliness, now 
seemed to be chilly with dejection. At first he 
213 


SIMPLES 


thought this was his own fault, that his mood was 
reading a false quality into the chamber. Gradually 
he began to perceive that the emotion arose from the 
room itself. It was untidy. It was dusty. It had 
a mournful air of neglect. A delicate lampshade was 
torn and it let out a bleak and revealing light. The 
room spoke of a mind no longer happy and smooth¬ 
working. Gilda’s mind, of course, since under her 
fingers the peculiar charm of this room had grown 
and had always been sustained. 

Alban read into it her misery. But he saw another 
thing that troubled him. There had been, he re¬ 
membered, at least four photographs of Edwin in 
this room. A large head and shoulders in a silver 
frame had stood conspicuously on a little bookcase. 
The others had been scattered about, but all well in 
the eye. There were none visible now. He found a 
rim clear of dust where the large silver frame had 
stood on the bookcase—the dust itself a significance $ 
the photo, the other photos were gone. There was 
no hint of Edwin in the room. 

That was rather extraordinary, rather perplexing. 
The room told plainly how upset Gilda was in regard 
to Edwin, and yet she had removed his portraits. 
That was a contradiction he could not understand. 

Gilda entered the room hurriedly, her breath com¬ 
ing shallowly, quickly, in excitement. She stopped 
dead at the sight of him, and moaned a little. 

He was shocked at that moan. He was acutely 
concerned at her appearance. He had never seen 
her quite so pale, he thought, and there were dark 
214 


SIMPLES 


finger smudges under her eyes, while the lids seemed 
red. 

“She’s been crying and crying.” He thought, 
“What a damn brute the fellow is.” 

But the change in her wasn’t really that alone. 
She looked pinched, the nostrils especially looked 
pinched, and that gave her an air of being more than 
miserable—of being frightened. 

She was that, and disappointed almost to tears. 
She faltered before him: “Oh, you, Alban. The 
girl said Mr. Kent, and I thought—” 

Alban knew what she had thought. She had 
thought it was Edwin. As she moved, a little list¬ 
lessly, into the light, he saw that she had powdered 
with the anxious haste of one unaccustomed to it, 
that she had even touched up her lips. He was heart¬ 
sick at the sight. He saw in it her pitiable effort to 
appear at her best before the man who was losing 
interest in her charms. 

She saw that he noted these things, for she flushed 
and her fingers slipped to the bosom of her dress for 
her handkerchief. Then, with a steadier look at him, 
she pulled it out and vigorously rubbed powder and 
lip-stick away. 

“I oughtn’t to have done that,” she said. “I did 
it without thinking—or from too much thinking. I 
thought you were Edwin.” 

He saw at once that she had made up her mind 
to say something about Edwin. He met her more 
than half-way. “I know,” he said, “I understand 
Edwin doesn’t come round often.” 

215 


SIMPLES 


She stood rigid, watching him mutely. He saw 
that as she listened her lips were forming one after 
another the very words he was uttering, as though 
not a syllable must escape. When he had finished, 
she put her hand on his arm, and drew him towards 
an ingle-nook. 

“Come and sit down,” she said. “It’s so easy to 
talk after all. I was stupid to be afraid.” 

“Not afraid of me, Gilda?” he said astonished. 

“Oh, but you particularly,” she said, then quickly: 
“No, of everybody. I can’t bear myself or anybody 
these days, Alban.” She deliberately selected a 
corner well in the shadow. 

“Now we’ll talk,” she said, “Oh, Alban, you’re 
rather a comforting feeling, you know.” 

“That’s what I want to be. And we’ll talk about 
what you like—but I think it ought to be about you 
and Edwin.” 

“Yes,” she said, and was for a long time silent. 
Then unexpectedly. “Am I changed, Alban?” 

“Changed? No. Why changed?” 

“Not a bit? Are you sure?” 

“Perfectly. You’re the same as ever. Why 
should you change in seven or eight weeks?” 

“Don’t I look jaded, haggard, as though I—as 
though something—as though I was worrying?” She 
was confused, anxious, fearful. 

“Oh, that,” he smiled. “Well, a little washed 
cut, fagged out, I should say.” 

“Is that all?” Curious how she insisted. “That’s 
all the difference you see?” 

216 


SIMPLES 


“It isn’t even a difference,” he said. “It’s merely 
that you are a little tired, a little pinched.” 

“Pinched!” she cried, and she was sitting bolt up¬ 
right, and he saw terror in the eyes that looked wildly 
into his. “You see thatV ’ 

He couldn’t understand her at all. Or rather he 
felt that this Edwin business had affected her more 
deeply than anyone imagined. She was so nervous, 
so jumpy, so easily thrown off her balance. 

“You see that?” she cried again. “You see I’m 
pinched?” 

“That’s just a term, Gilda. I meant I can see you 
have been upset and are worrying.” 

“But you mean more than that—pinched! Of 
course you mean more than that. Tell me frankly, 
Alban.” 

“No, I don’t,” he said, wondering why she should 
be so upset at so silly a word. “It was just an expres¬ 
sion that came to me. I would have said ‘wan’ or 
‘seedy’ if either had come to me first.” 

She watched his face carefully as he spoke, seek¬ 
ing something in it beyond words. She sank back into 
the shadow again, and remained so silent that he him¬ 
self had to say in the end, “Perhaps you don’t care 
to talk about Edwin.” 

“What are they saying about me and Edwin?” 
she asked. 

“If you mean the family,” said Alban, going 
slowly, “they think there is something wrong be¬ 
tween you.” 

“They are saying he is tired of me?” 

217 


SIMPLES 


“They think there is an estrangement.” 

“But they feel it is all on Edwin’s side—that he is 
the one who is backing out.” 

“They feel . . .” 

“The truth, please, Alban. Don’t be afraid. I’m 
not unaware of things.” 

“Yes, they feel that Edwin has changed.” 

“No,” she said with so sudden an anger that he was 
startled. “No, he hasn’t changed. He’s as he al¬ 
ways was—even I can see that now” 

Alban was silent. 

“And they are saying that I’m pursuing him, won’t 
leave him alone, aren’t they? It’s I who won’t let 
him go . . . All right, you needn’t answer, I see 
it in your face, Alban. And I suppose it’s true.” 
Her hands caught together convulsively. “It’s hor¬ 
rible. I hate myself . . . But they don’t know , 
they don’t understand . . .” Her voice was 
nervously intense almost to the point of breaking. 

Alban said slowly to help her, “My opinion is that 
you have reached a stage when you could not bear to 
give him up.” 

Her hands clasped tighter, she seemed unable to 
answer. 

“You see, you’ve been engaged so long that it is 
hard to give him up, that’s how I look at it,” said 
Alban, lamely. He wished she would speak. 

“You’re on my side, Alban?” she demanded 
suddenly. 

He weighed his answer. “Yes, Gilda, if you wish 
to keep Edwin to his promise, I’m on your side.” 

218 


SIMPLES 


“And—and you don’t ask questions?” 

“That isn’t necessary, Gilda,” he said. “It seems 
to me that this is a matter in which the girl—you— 
decide. Unless you break off with Edwin I hold 
that he is in honour bound to carry out the engage¬ 
ment.” 

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “We are engaged. He 
can’t alter that. He is bound by honour.” 

“On the other hand,” said Alban, slowly, “there’s 
his side, you know, Gilda.” 

“His side?” she cried indignantly. “He has no 
side at all. He must keep his promise to marry me.” 

Taken aback by the unexpected fierceness of her 
uncompromising tone, Alban tried to read her face in 
the shadow. He could learn nothing from it. He 
said: “I have no right to interfere, of course, I 
shouldn’t have gone as far as this, I have no real 
standing in this affair. But—” 

“But you will take my side against them all,” she 
said. “I know you will. That’s why I am talking 
to you, Alban. I haven’t talked like this to anybody 
. . . Not Rosamund ... Not my father even 
. . . But you—you’re an old friend, and I know 
how straight and fair your are. And you’re his 
brother . . . Oh, how wild I sound, but I’m in 

a corner, Alban, dear, and I must have help. Must! ” 

He did not know whether she was crying, or on the 
verge of crying. He did realise how deeply, how 
profoundly she was upset. He said as gently as he 
could: “I am on your side, of course, for the little 
good I can do. It is because I am, that I want to 
219 


SIMPLES 


say that there is another way of looking at things. 
If you and Edwin don’t hit it off before marriage, 
how can you expect . . .” 

She gave a little cry so close to hysteria that he 
stopped dead. She put out her hand and clutched 
his arm feverishly. He could feel the heat of her 
palm through his coat sleeve. “Don’t say it,” she 
cried in a strangled voice. “Don’t say it. Leave all 
that alone.” 

“But it is a thing that must be considered.” 

“Don’t say it,” she cried again. “Don’t say it. 
Haven’t I thought that out? Haven’t I? . . . 

Well . . . Don’t bring it up . . . You mustn’t 
bring it up ... I won’t listen. I can’t! ” 

She snatched her hand away, crouched back in the 
shadow. He could see the quick, jerky lift of her 
breasts, and the shine of her eyes. She was panting, 
glaring at him, like some wild thing at bay. 

“All right,” he said, “if you have made up your 
mind, Gilda . . .” 

“It is absolutely made up,” she said thickly. 

He nodded. He didn’t understand, but he recog¬ 
nised that she alone decided. 

“You can count on me to do all I can,” he said. 
“It won’t be much, but I’ll do it. I’ll try and make 
the family, Edwin, see the straight thing to do.” 

“Make him keep his promise, that is all I ask,” 
she said. Her hands gripped the cushions of the seat. 
“His promise to me was that he would marry me in 
December, and I want him to keep it.” 

220 


SIMPLES 


“In December,” cried Alban. “That’s early. I 
hadn’t heard of that.” 

“In December, before the New Year, anyhow,” 
she said quickly, as though to cover up too great an 
eagerness. “That was what we settled when we last 
discussed things.” She was recovering, speaking 
more fluently, too fluently perhaps for one rather re¬ 
ticent about such things. Something in her insisted 
on lulling him with copious explanations. “You see, 
we’d agreed and I’ve made all my arrangements. 
Fixed up things ahead, given—given orders ahead. 
You see what that means to a girl, don’t you, Alban? 
She’s silly, perhaps, but she feels so ashamed at—at 
having to countermand such things, to see the looks 
on faces as she does it . . . Perhaps you can’t 

understand, but it’s awful.” 

Alban could understand. He could understand it 
in another girl, but it was unexpected in Gilda. He 
had felt her rather bigger than such trifles. He could 
have sworn that she would have triumphed over such 
petty things with her usual high courage. A little 
disturbing to find that, after all, she was a sister to 
ordinary girls. 

Under this unexpectedness he could only ask, 
“Did mother know that the wedding was to be so 
soon?” 

“I don’t know what your mother knew,” she said. 
“I don’t know what Edwin told her. But that is 
what we arranged. And I took it for granted—and 
I want it to be as we arranged.” Suddenly she realised 
that there was a certain uselessness in all this. “Oh, 
221 


SIMPLES 


I oughtn’t to be talking like this to you, Alban. I 
oughtn’t to need to. I should be talking to Edwin. 
But he won’t come near me. He won’t give me a 
chance. He avoids me. Avoids me!” She stood 
up. “If he’d only come to me like a man, and talk it 
out . . . But he doesn’t. He won’t!” 

“There,” said Alban, also standing, “is where 
there will be difficulties, Gilda. If Edwin won’t talk 
with you, won’t agree . . .” 

He saw that she was calm, determined, almost 
cruel. “He will have to agree, Alban,” she said 
harshly. “I will make him marry me.” 

“My dear girl, you can’t do that, you know,” 
cried Alban. 

“I will make him marry me,” she said implacably. 

“Be sensible, my dear girl. To talk of making 
him marry you, will only—” 

“I will make him marry me. Tell him that, 
Alban. I mean what I say.” Her tone was ruth¬ 
less, so ruthless that Alban had the feeling that he 
was meeting for the first time an utterly new woman. 
Or was it the real, inner woman, the woman his 
mother saw, emerging? He said almost coldly: 
“ You can’t make him marry you if he won’t, Gilda. 
Even the law . . .” 

“I’ll go even to law, if necessary,” she said 
fiercely. 

iii 

“That,” said Rosamund, looking rather like an 
outlandish doll in her Chinese dressing-wrap, “that’s 
222 


SIMPLES 


sheer bluff, a threat to scare the fellow into doing the 
right thing.” 

“I don’t know,” said Alban, hunched up on his 
bed. I never saw her like that before. “She’s a 
different girl to the one I thought I knew.” 

“She sounds more desperate than different,” said 
Rosamund, musing. “But, anyhow, it was bluff. 
Gilda and breach-of-promise don’t go together. 
Bluff! But you must try it out on Edwin, Oswald, 
Mother and Co. It’s the sort of thing to which their 
temperaments will react most powerfully.” 

Alban, however, was busy adjusting this business 
of temperaments. He was in an unpleasant state of 
mind. Gilda’s final attitude had been so great a 
shock that he was wondering whether, after all, his 
mother’s outlook had not been more accurate than his 
own or Rosamund’s. 

Gilda’s attitude had been a revelation, he thought, 
of her real self—the self that her beauty and charm 
had hidden from his eyes. He did not like to think 
this, but what else was he to think? That exposure 
of herself had given the only practical explanation 
of an attitude otherwise inexplicable. Love, desire, 
affinity could not explain her determination to marry 
Edwin. Only a determination not to relinquish so 
good a match fitted in with her harsh decision to hold 
the fellow by threat of the law if necessary. 

It was a complete, a shocking reversal of all his 
worshipping thoughts of her, and yet ihe had to be 
just. Hateful though it was, it fitted. He felt that 
his mother had really seen the truth with eyes not 
223 


SIMPLES 


blinded by he prejudice of chivalry (as she had 
called it), which had obscured his own outlook. 

He was miserable and in pain, but his instinctive 
desire for the straightness, the decency, the truth of 
anything made him see that his mother’s attitude was 
probably right. 

Rosamund, who had crept into his room on his 
return—a late return, for he had tramped the streets 
with his thoughts—was also thinking out the brief 
summary he had given her of his visit to Gilda. 
Curled up in his chair and in spite of her barbaric 
wrap, she had an air of thinking sharply and deeply 
on a matter that was obviously puzzling. She 
screwed her small, clean-cut mouth sideways as 
though something rather unpleasant had occurred to 
her. She shot a wary look at her brother, and then 
a glance more full, as though he, for the moment, 
was more interesting. 

“Don’t fly off the handle, Alban,” she said. 
“Don’t be in such a hurry with your final judg¬ 
ments.” 

She was obviously reading his thoughts. He 
recognised it. He said: “Well, Mother’s explana¬ 
tion—it fits logically, doesn’t it?” 

“Rats,” said Rosamund, scornfully. She settled 
deeper into his easy chair, dragging whitey-pink 
shins out of sight under the gauze of her ridiculous 
night-gown. “I know what you’re thinking,” she 
said scoffingly. “The unerring feminine eye of 
Mother has penetrated coldly to the truth. Well, 
I’ve got an unerring feminine eye, too; it’s no less 
224 


SIMPLES 


cold, and it is—though I say it—rather keener for 
the stark truth than Mother’s. And that isn’t the 
truth I see. To say that Gilda is holding Edwin on 
mercenary grounds is simply out of drawing, out of 
character.” 

“Then why is she holding him, Rosamund?” 

“We don’t get that answer so easily,” she said. 
“It’s a queer business, but I know the money-grab¬ 
bing, social-position theory won’t wash. If Gilda 
wanted a Kent husband, she’d . . .” She looked a 
little impertiently at Alban, her slim, fine pipe of 
a throat bubbled with a suppressed giggle, and said 
aloofly: “But we don’t want mere speculation. 
Let’s have facts. Let’s have a full report of your 
visit from your first ring at the door-bell, Alban.” 

Alban began to go over his visit. He had got as 
far as Gilda’s entrance when he said: “Oh, there 
was one strange thing. All Edwin’s photos had been 
taken out of the sitting-room.” 

“Ah,” said Rosamund, keenly. “We’ll go back on 
this. We’re forgetting that rooms tell secrets. 
Those photos were gone. Anything else?” 

Alban described the queer impression he had had 
of that sitting-room, its untidiness and dejection. 
Rosamund nodded at each point. She, too, realised 
the room wasn’t like the old Gilda. When he had 
finished with the room, he paused, and Rosamund 
said, “Go on.” He described Gilda’s entrance again. 
Her first words. “Half a minute,” said Rosamund. 
“What was she like? What was she looking like?” 

Alban spoke of the powder and lip-stick. And 
225 


SIMPLES 


from that he went on to Gilda’s strange anxiety about 
her looks, the way she had asked him if she had 
changed, her queer fear at the simple word 
“pinched.” “You can see how she has suffered. 
How pitifully she is afraid that her suffering has 
spoilt her looks, and that she will not be able to hold 
Edwin with them.” 

“It was that which worried her—her being 
pinched?” said Rosamund in a curious voice. She 
was looking at him with eyes queerly wide and dark. 
Alban was surprised and irritated by her. How 
idiotically women were obsessed by trivial details. 
Here was Rosamund also forgetting the big issue 
just to dwell on the word “pinched.” 

She insisted upon it, though he was impatient to 
get on with the major points of his conversation. 
She wanted to know if “pinched” really did describe 
Gilda’s looks. Was she pinched about the nostrils? 
Alban agreed she was, and that pinched did actually 
describe her better than the other words he had told 
Gilda might have occurred to him first. “Did her 
eyes look queer?” was another one of Rosamund’s 
childish questions. 

“Yes, her eyes did look rather queerish,” Alban 
said, but they would, she’d been crying a lot. Yes, 
she was very pale, too. No, he had noted nothing 
about her figure. No, he didn’t think she looked 
stouter, fuller . . . No, not even up there. 

(Rosamund had indicated her own tiny dryad 
breasts.) “Where does all this lead us?” he snapped 
irritably. “We’re trying to find out what she is feel- 
226 


SIMPLES 


ing, not how she is looking . . . What’s the 

idea?” 

“All right,” she said in a toneless voice. “Go 
ahead, Alban.” And he went on, right on to the end 
without another interruption, even though he in¬ 
sisted and emphasised the harsh and mercenary tone 
Gilda had employed when she demanded an early 
marriage and threatened Edwin with the law. 

“And I don’t see how else we can look at things 
after that,” he had said with a touch of despair. He 
glanced at Rosamund and became angry. His sister 
was definitely not paying attention to him, was off 
on a train of thought of her own. 

“You see,” he snapped again, “Mother’s idea is 
the only one that squares with facts.” 

Rosamund uncurled her thin legs and stood up. 
Her eyes came back to reality and fixed his with a 
curious passion: “You’ll have to fight hard for 
Gilda,” she said. “You’ve just got to make them do 
what she wants.” 

He was staggered: “Good Lord,” he gasped, “and 
I’ve just been saying . . .” 

“I know,” she said. “But it’s not true. I don’t 
think it’s true ... I wish I thought it was. But 
you mustn’t let her down, Alban. Never!” 

“You mean you see why she wants to marry him?” 

“I don’t know. Yes, perhaps I do . . . But 

leave it at that, Alban. Don’t bother about that part, 
only fight. You must fight. You must never give 
in. Edwin must keep his promise to her.” 

227 


SIMPLES 


iv 

An inexplicable feminine attitude. The more 
Alban thought of Rosamund’s sudden, set, Sphinx- 
like certainty, the more baffled he became. He could 
see no cause for his sister, and his kid sister at that, 
suddenly recognising that Gilda’s attitude was en¬ 
tirely right and also entirely unmercenary. He went 
back over the whole of their talk, of his talk with 
Gilda, and he could find no single item that could 
have crystallized her doubts into a final, indestruc¬ 
tible, feminine conviction. He felt he was incapable 
of understanding the secret workings of the female 
mind or the superb, sure illogic that arose from those 
workings. 

For Rosamund was rooted in the certainty of her 
rightness. She visited Gilda next day. When she 
came back she was rather over-cheerful with the 
family, rather grave in her attic-study. She seemed 
more anxious to concentrate on a black-and-white 
drawing than to talk about Gilda. 

She said that Gilda had nothing at all to say. 
Nothing! She herself had nothing to report. 
Nothing! Alban felt this was a very poor return for 
his very detailed confidence. He pressed her. In 
the middle of it she cried: “Oh, shut up, Alban. 
Don’t you see—can’t you see I want to think? And 
alone. Go down stairs and stir up Mother. And 
Oswald.” 

“About Gilda?” 

She almost withered him: “Who else, you mutt? 
228 


SIMPLES 


Didn’t I say yesterday we’ve got to make a devil of 
a fight for Gilda? Don’t forget it for a minute.” 

v 

Mrs. Kent refused to be stirred up. She refused 
to talk about Gilda. Pressed, cornered, she said im¬ 
periously: “I see no good in discussing this, Alban. 
It is sad, very sad, but I see no good in going over it 
again and again. We must let it alone and allow the 
young people to work out their destiny in their own 
way.” 

“But Edwin is determined to . . .” 

“That will do, Alban,” said his mother, firmly. 
“We will not go any further.” 

Even when goaded, Mrs. Kent would not go any 
further. Abruptly, brazenly, Rosamund said after 
dinner, “I saw Gilda to-day, Mother.” 

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Kent, soothingly. “Did 
you go by way of Estuary Bank? The water must 
have looked particularly beautiful to-day, must have 
satisfied the artist in you.” 

“It wasn’t the artist that went to Gilda’s,” said 
Rosamund. “It was just the human in me. I want 
to talk to you about Gilda, Mother.” 

Mrs. Kent put down her inevitable jumper. 

“And I will not talk about Gilda, Rosamund.” 

“You must, Mother.” 

Mrs. Kent looked at her coldly. 

“I think you heard what I said, Rosamund.” 

229 


SIMPLES 


“But you must, Mother. We can’t let things go 
on like this.” 

“That will do, Rosamund. I decide whether I 
talk of these things or not. My children don’t do it 
for me yet.” 

“But you can’t turn your back on it like this. 
You’ve got to face it, not funk it.” 

“You had better go to your room,” said Mrs. 
Kent, severely. 

“I am not going to my room,” said Rosamund, 
with forced calm. “Edwin is behaving like a beast 
to Gilda, and we’ve got a right to object.” 

“Very well,” said Mrs. Kent, rising with frigid 
dignity, “if you will not leave the room, I shall.” 

“That’s running away, that’s cowardly . . .” 

Oswald came in with his heavy metal: “None of 
that now, Rosamund. You have heard what ypur 
mother said. Go out of the room at once.” 

“Rosamund is right,” said Alban, as quietly as he 
could. “This matter of Edwin and Gilda has gone 
too far. It concerns us all. We . . .” 

“Shut up, Alban,” snapped Oswald, out of 
patience. “We’ve had all we want of that from 
you.” 

Mrs. Kent suddenly and terribly swung on him. 
“Yes, quite enough,” she cried in white, hot anger. 
“Be careful, Alban, it is getting to a point where I, 
your own mother, will not stand it any longer. It is 
unendurable. Every time you come home there is 
trouble, disturbance. Always you—always you. 
Never one of my other children, always you who up- 
230 


SIMPLES 


set things, who make bad blood, who set sister 
against brother . . .” 

“If you mean me—”, began Rosamund. 

“I mean you. You’re only a foolish, empty- 
headed little echo of Alban’s impossible fads and 
ideas. Well, I am not going to stand it much longer. 
I will not stand it. I am mistress in my own house. 
I will remain mistress, I will not have this defiance, 
this wilful annoyance, this—this deliberate making 
of bad blood. It will have to be ended—or I shall 
end it. Understand that. I put my foot down this 
time. You can obey—or you can take the con¬ 
sequences.” 

She was staring at Alban, her face white and fierce, 
her eyes shining with anger, her look full of menace. 
Alban, dumbfounded at the intensity of her passion 
against him, himself furious at the cruel illogic of it, 
said evenly: “I am sorry, Mother, you take it this 
way. It is only because you won’t see what we—I 
am driving at . . .” 

“We won’t see,” she cried. “Have you ever said 
anything but that? Have you ever asked yourself 
why it is that it’s always c we’ who won’t see, never 
you who won’t? You never do. You have always 
set yourself against us. You have always been per¬ 
verse, deliberately, obstinately, cruelly perverse. 
From your very boyhood you have been a trial and 
trouble and sorrow to us. None of the others are 
like you. You only demand the sacrifice of all of us 
for you. Well, I will see they are not sacrificed. I 
give you full warning that I, that Oswald and I, have 
231 


SIMPLES 


about reached the limits of our patience. Go on like 
this and we will know how to deal with you.” 

She swept towards the door. At the door: “I 
have never been so insulted in my life—and by my 
own children, too.” She went out. 

“There,” said Rosamund, in a cutting and con¬ 
temptuous voice, “goes all the feminine logic of the 
Victorian age. Plenty of passion, but never an argu¬ 
ment.” 

“Rosamund,” snarled Oswald, “get out of this 
room at once.” 

“Oswald,” said Rosamund in a low fierce voice, 
“I am not going to get out of this room. And what 
are you going to do about it?” 

They stood glaring at each other like animals about 
to come to grips. For an instant it seemed as though 
her eldest brother would put her out bodily. “Try 
it, Oswald,” she cried with a passionate exultance. 
“Try to do it! You don’t know how I’m longing 
to scratch and tear and bite and kick. . . . Try!” 

Oswald made a heavy gesture of disgust and 
moved to the door. 

“This doesn’t end it, Oswald,” said Alban, quietly. 
“This thing has got to be hammered out.” 

Oswald made a heavier gesture of disgust and left 
the room. 

vi 

Edwin came back from Brackenhurst two days 
later. He came in the full of the forenoon, and he 
came straight to the Factory. Alban saw him slip- 
232 


SIMPLES 


ping with a sort of jaunty furtiveness through the 
clerks 5 office to Oswald’s door. He himself fol¬ 
lowed him into Oswald’s office. 

Both brothers looked up, Edwin with his pert 
and wary sneer, Oswald with a real flash of temper. 

“What do you want, Alban?” Oswald said at 
once. “I am speaking to Edwin. Come back later.” 

“I want to speak to Edwin,” said Alban. 

“Look here,” snapped Oswald, “I’m going to 
have none of this, Alban. I won’t have you inter¬ 
fering. Go out.” 

“Somebody must interfere,” said Alban. “Since 
you won’t, I must.” He stood firmly with his back 
to the door. 

“Do you hear?” stormed Oswald. “I will not 
have this. It is none of your business. You have 
no right to come into it.” 

“It’s your business, I’ll admit,” said Alban, “but 
you do nothing. Something must be done. If you 
don’t do it, I shall.” 

Oswald, never powerful in an extempore situa¬ 
tion, glared at Alban, glanced at Edwin, who, sit¬ 
ting back in too conscious ease, his smile artificial in 
its set impertinence, saw that he must speak. He said 
insolently: “Let us get it over then. I take it that, 
as usual, Alban is championing the lady of his par¬ 
ticular regard, Gilda Conroy.” 

Oswald was silent. Alban walked to the desk. He 
said thickly: “Before we go any further, you’d bet¬ 
ter understand, Edwin, that if you adopt that tone 
about Gilda, I intend to give you the worst mauling 
233 


SIMPLES 


a man ever had.” He stared long and coldly at the 
grin that, undiminished, took on a sickly and furtive 
colour. “You recognize I mean it, I see. Now 
what do you intend to do with regard to your engage¬ 
ment to Gilda?” 

“That,” sneered Edwin, “is entirely my business.” 

“Pll have an answer. What do you intend to do 
about that engagement?” 

“I’ve answered. I do not intend to discuss my 
own business with you.” 

“And I agree,” growled Oswald. “It is not your 
business, Alban.” 

“I have made it my business,” said Alban. “And 
I want an answer. You are engaged to this girl, 
you are bound by your promises. They’re sacred. 
You have agreed to marry her in December. You 
must keep your word.” 

“In December, by Jove,” sneered Edwin. “That’s 
quick. That’s news.” 

“You needn’t lie,” said Alban. “I know you 
promised that the wedding should be in December.” 

“You seem strangely well informed, I must say.” 
Edwin’s tone had a wealth of meaning. Alban’s 
eyes glowered at him, and the long chin set stiffly. 
Edwin shrank back. Alban, determined not to spoil 
things by bad temper, said evenly: “I know. You 
have made your promises, you must keep them.” 

“Going to force me to keep them—physically, 
eh?” jeered Edwin, with bared teeth. 

“Not necessarily. I am simply suggesting that as 
a man of honour you should keep your word.” 

234 


SIMPLES 


“And if I don’t keep my word?” The question 
was insolent, but it was also wary. 

“I can’t conceive of you being such an abominable 
cur.” 

“Look here, we’ll have no words like that,” bleated 
Oswald. 

“Can you think of a better for a man who deliber¬ 
ately engages himself to a girl, deliberately captures 
her affections, definitely promises to marry her, and 
gives a day for it, and then goes back on every 
sacred bond? Can you think of any term more 
suitable?” 

“Her affections,” jeered Edwin, and Alban’s hand 
shot out and caught his wrist. The hand twisted the 
arm back with immense strength, and real fear came 
into Edwin’s eyes, yet he seemed incapable of move¬ 
ment. It was Oswald who shouted, “Stop that, do 
you hear—” and the noise of his chair rasping back 
as he leaped up brought Alban back to his senses. 
Alban’s hand came back and lay on the desk clenched 
hard. He was fighting down an anger that might 
spoil things for Gilda. 

“If you can’t keep yourself in hand, out of the 
office you go,” cried Oswald, impotently. 

Alban ignored Oswald. Edwin sidled his chair 
out of arm’s reach. 

“That sort of bullying won’t do anything,” he 
said impudently. “And all this big talk about curs 
and honour and so forth may be fine, but what does 
it mean? I’m a cur, you say. Why? Because I’ve 
realised what you’ve already pointed out several 
235 


SIMPLES 


times, my superior fellow 3 that is, that a marriage 
between me and Gilda would be a ruddy failure.” 

“It is what you yourself have argued,” said 
Oswald with an air of age-old wisdom. 

“That won’t do now,” said Alban, quietly. “Gilda 
has gone too far—” 

“Too far,” cried Edwin, whipping a weasel-like 
glance at him. “What the devil do you mean?” 

“I mean, in the beginning the engagement could 
have been broken off without hurt to Gilda. Not 
now. It is for her to decide now.” 

“Oh, is it?” said Edwin, viciously. “I’ve no word 
in the ruining of my life, I suppose?” 

“No! Not as an honourable man. If Gilda does 
not release you. . . .” 

Edwin said with a wicked snarl: “Don’t jaw like 
a damned, psalm-smiting prig. You talk like a fool. 
If you don’t know life and facts, I’ll put ’em plainly 
before you. I’ve put ’em plainly enough before her. 
I’m not going to muck up my life for a mistake. 
I’m not going to be tied hand and foot to misery all 
my life because of a sentimental idea. Hear that? 
I don’t intend to make my life a hell—or hers for 
the matter of that, just because of a moment of mid¬ 
summer craziness. I’ve told her that, straight. If 
she won’t listen, it’s not my fault. But she knows. 
I’ve got no more to say. I’ve finished with the whole 
damn bag of tricks, see.” 

“You mean you’ve told her you wanted the en¬ 
gagement broken?” cried Oswald. 

236 


SIMPLES 


“More than once,” said Edwin, sullenly. “Pm 
sick of it.” 

“And—and she refuses to release you.” 

“That’s the idea.” 

“It’s utterly unreasonable,” _cried Oswald, almost 
gobbling in his indignation. “It’s—it’s monstrous.” 

“It’s for her to say,” said Alban. “Whatever you 
may think about it, it is for her to decide.” 

“Her!” fumed Oswald. “For her to decide, for 
a sentimental, stupid girl—a designing girl to de¬ 
cide.” The cold glare in Alban’s eyes 

halted him. He waved an angry hand. “You’re 
talking arrant rubbish, Alban.” 

“You’ll find that the law doesn’t think so,” said 
Alban. 

Edwin laughed abruptly and sharply. Oswald 
stiffened as though struck. “The law!” he said, and 
he packed all the Kent fear of scandal into the word. 
“The law? What are you talking about? The 
law?” 

“The law of breach-of-promise is pretty plain,” 
said Alban. 

“Good God!” gasped Oswald, “she wouldn’t 
dream of such a thing.” 

“It’s the only way to deal with blackguards like 
Edwin,” said Alban, without heat. 

Again Edwin laughed shortly. 

“A blackguard, eh?” he jeered. “Well, what 
about yourself? Where does all this interest in 
Gilda spring from? From a quite honourable regard, 
237 



SIMPLES 


eh? How do you know she’s going to law, eh? 
A pretty intimate confidence that.” 

Alban instinctively defended Gilda from this 
brute: “No confidence,” he said. “I shall advise 
her to go to law.” 

“You,” shouted Oswald. “You’ll act against your 
own flesh and blood?” 

“I mean to,” said Alban, “unless Edwin keeps his 
promise.” 

“A pretty kind of brother, isn’t he?” sneered 
Edwin. 

Alban stood rigid. Oswald, breathing hard, feel¬ 
ing a final and unappeasable hate against Alban, 
stood rigid. Edwin, pert, sneering, sly, looked from 
one to the other. His grin deepened: 

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see Gilda. I’ll put it 
straight with her.” 

He went with a mean little swagger out of the 
room, his brothers not moving. 


238 


Qhapter XI 


i 

T HE atmosphere at the Kent house was like 
an armed camp that night. 

Mrs. Kent sat at the carving end of the table, 
implacable, rigid. It was obvious that Oswald had 
told her of the scene at the office, of Alban’s threat 
to invoke the law. It was obvious what the effect 
had been on her. It had produced in her an anger 
that lifted her above acting. Her usual airs, the 
air of a harassed mother bearing insupportable bur¬ 
dens, the air of a woman trying to maintain her 
natural sweetness despite the slings and arrows of an 
outrageous family, were swept right away. There 
were no poses about her, only cold, black anger. 

The table was afflicted by her chilliness. Even 
Camillus, after Edwin, who wasn’t present, the most 
ebullient, was smothered by the prevailing gloom. 
Ethelfleda, sniffing a little with self-righteousness, 
inclined to make little dagger-thrusts at Alban, who 
showed a stony surface, and Rosamund who proved 
too dangerous. Oswald sat in pontifical gloom. 
Dunstan was away engineering. 

Cold gloom everywhere. No words from Mrs. 
Kent, monosyllables from Oswald, an intermittent 
and whispered muttering from the others. Not even 

239 


SIMPLES 


the promise of Aunt Heppie’s visit on the morrow 
drew a spark from them. Ominous this, for Aunt 
Heppie, outside her actual presence, was a source of 
unflagging enjoyment. 

After dinner Mrs. Kent and Oswald rose and van¬ 
ished utterly. That was the effect, though from the 
sound of their voices they were deeply engaged in 
the morning-room. But that was the effect—the 
angry withdrawal of the gods from earth. 

Rosamund, after trying to get private conversa¬ 
tion with Alban in the drawing-room, said: “We 
can’t talk against Ethel’s hen-noises. Come up to 
my attic.” 

“More mischief, I suppose,” simpered Ethelfleda, 
as they went to the door. 

“Could you suppose anything clean or decent, 
Ethel?” said Rosamund. “No, of course not. Your 
kind of brain isn’t built that way.” 

In the attic Rosamund, curled like a kitten, lis¬ 
tened moodily to all Alban had to tell. 

“Oh, you’ve jolted ’em,” she said in the end, but 
not with enthusiasm. “It was sweet of you to take 
the law business off Gilda’s on to your own 
shoulders.” 

“I was down to that. I had to bluff. Nothing 
else seemed to move Edwin.” 

“That’s it,” said Rosamund. “We can’t really 
move them at all. ... Not Edwin, not any of 
them.” 

“I feel that. What can we do?” 

240 


SIMPLES 


“My God,” said Rosamund, almost with a moan, 
“what can we do?” 

They were silent for a long time, each despairing, 
moody. 

“Edwin’s seeing her now, I suppose,” said Alban, 
at last. 

“Oh, that,” said Rosamund. “I almost wish he 
wasn’t. . . . It’ll mean more dirtiness.” 

“You think so?” cried Alban, half starting up. 

“What else, from Edwin? Don’t rush off. You 
can’t do anything.” 

“Can’t I?” snapped Alban. “Can’t I?” 

“Punch his damn head off, I suppose,” she smiled 
wanly at him. “Do him good, too. But what help 
will it be to—to her?” 

Alban sat again. “We seem tied hand and foot,” 
he said. 

“We are,” she answered, and again they were 
silent. 

Suddenly from out its womb came a remarkable 
question. 

“Alban, you’re in love with Gilda, aren’t you?” 

Alban stared at the dim patch of white that now, 
in the growing darkness, stood for his sister’s face. 
He couldn’t believe he had heard right—couldn’t 
answer. She had to say again, “You are in love with 
her, aren’t you?” 

“Is that quite nice?” he asked. 

“Why not, if it’s clean and honourable? If it 
doesn’t touch her. I should be proud to love her if 
I were a man.” 


241 


SIMPLES 


“I am proud of it,” said Alban, quietly. 

“And it’s the real thing, Alban? The thing that 
will stand up against anything—against whatever 
happens?” 

“Why bring this in, Rosamund?” he said in a 
pained voice. “It really oughtn’t to be brought up.” 

“I’ve got a reason, Alban,” she said quickly. “Or 
it may only be an idea. . . . But I’ve got a feeling 
that maybe there’ll come something that will test 
your love—terribly—in which only your love will 
save her. . . . Don’t be ashamed of it, Alban. 
I’ve seen how things were 3 we all have, even Edwin, 
but I particularly. I’ve—I’ve felt what you feel, 
being rather like you inside, you know. There’s 
nothing wrong about it. . . . It’s—it’s rather 
fine, Alban, the way you’ve got it. And I’ve got to 
talk about it because. . . . Oh, take that for 
granted, Alban, it’s not a silly idea. . . . But the 
thing I want to know is whether it’ll stand any 
strain.” 

“A strain? How do you mean . . .?” 

“Will it?” 

“I think it would stand a strain.” 

“Think! only that?” 

“I don’t know. I’ve never gone into it. . . . 
Yes, I know it would stand a strain.” 

“Any sort of strain? A strain such as a feeling 
that all you thought about her had—had been 
wrong? An ugly, beastly strain?” 

“I think so.” 

“Think?” 

242 


SIMPLES 


“More than that. I feel it would stand up against 
anything.” 

“I believe it would. And—and don’t forget it is 
a thing to count on.” 

“Rosamund, I really don’t see where all this leads 
to.” 

“No? A man, your type of man, wouldn’t think 
of—of things. But leave it. It’s just an idea I’ve 
got into my head . . . Only, remember you’ve 

always got to love Gil da—hard.” She paused, and 
went on, as though it was the same subject, only 
Alban, puzzled, felt it wasn’t. “We’ve got some 
tough moments to face, Alban.” 

“Such as?” 

“The family. When a family like ours is roused 
in its defence it can be very hard and brutal—a sort 
of monster, defending its wrongs, of course, but still 
defending. A mother like ours, Alban, will stop at 
nothing. She’ll do ugly things, rotten things too, in 
order that she and hers shall survive unsullied and 
unthreatened.” 

Alban stirred uneasily, a sort of protest, but he 
could not put it into words. He had felt the menace 
of his mother already. 

“Queer,” went on Rosamund. “She’s soft, in¬ 
dulgent, a dear in many things, but threatened, as 
she thinks, particularly threatened with regard to the 
family, the Kents, the Kent name, Kent Drugs—the 
whole boiling of our social standing, financial worth, 
our supposed position in the world and all the rest of 
the things that make her say the word ‘Kent’ with a 
243 


SIMPLES 


sort of ecstatic awe—threatened there, she is a tiger, 
implacable. She’ll break you, she’ll break me, she’ll 
break anybody she has power over rather than that 
this holy thing called ‘Kent’ should suffer. And 
she’ll do it on all the highest principles. She’ll be as 
ruthless as a man-killer, all for the sake of the 
family and the family interests.” 

“You’re saying that this is what we have to face? 
That she’ll break us . . . you?” 

“I’m independent,” said Rosamund. “I’m self- 
supporting.” 

“Me then?” said Alban, in amused scorn. And as 
Rosamund didn’t answer, he went on, “What power 
has she over me, my dear? I’m as free as you are.” 

“Alban,” said Rosamund, on a note of urgency, 
“you’ve always underestimated her—her and Os¬ 
wald. You’ve taken them too much for granted. 
You even think there is nothing to fear from slow, 
soft, heavy people like them. You’re wrong, Alban. 
They’re dangerous. Truly they are. And they 
don’t love you. No, I’m not being horrid. As a 
son and brother they may put up with you, like you 
even. But as Alban the disturbing element, as the 
boy of violent and frightening opinions, they don’t 
like you. They’re afraid of you. They are afraid 
of your upsetting all their solid, profitable plans. 
You’ve always been an anarchist to them, and they’re 
scared of your bombing the family fortunes, the 
family interest, the family name. That’s why 
they’ve held you off, bottled you up. They are 
244 


SIMPLES 


afraid, and with that sort of solid mind fear means 
hate.” 

“That’s all rather fantastic, you know, Rosa¬ 
mund.” 

“And I suppose your sort will never believe such 
things of their own blood,” sighed Rosamund. 

“No,” said Alban, emphatically. “Not a bit.” 

“Well, I’ve warned you. Look out,” she said. 

“This is the thing you think we face?” 

“That and other things.” 

“I don’t see how Gilda figures in it.” 

“You’ll find it’s all bound up together. Look 
out.” 

“Oh, I shall not keep my eyes shut,” he said. 

She sighed faintly from the darkness of the couch. 
“I hate what’s coming,” she murmured. “If it 
wasn’t for Gilda, I’d bolt. I love Gilda—I suppose 
that’s the you in me. And she really loves me—I 
think that’s for the you in me, too.” 

“Rosamund!” came Alban’s protest. 

“Yes, underneath I’m certain she loves you, al¬ 
ways has loved you.” 

“That is certainly not the thing to say,” snapped 
Alban. 

“No,” said Rosamund. “I suppose it’s not. But 
it’s a fact—to remember, Alban.” 

ii 

Next morning the tension was still maintained. 
There was no sign of Edwin in the house, and no one 

245 


SIMPLES 


knew of the result of Edwin’s visit to Gilda. Alban 
imagined that his mother had packed him out of 
Earlhampton for the present, just as she was de¬ 
termined to pack Alban out of Earlhampton 
ultimately. 

She told him bluntly, coldly, that she expected 
him to leave for Moap’s Farm at the earliest possible 
moment. 

“My part in Edwin’s engagement is the reason, of 
course,” he said as coldly. 

“I do not wish to discuss this,” she said frigidly. 
“I wish you to go at once.” 

“I am sorry, Mother,” he said, “I cannot go.” 

“You absolutely refuse to obey me?” 

“If you put it that way, yes. I will not go until 
this matter is satisfactorily settled.” 

“That is insolent of you,” she said with her new, 
cold power. “It is not your business. You have no 
right at all to assume that it is. I will not allow you 
that right.” 

“I have made it my business,” he said. “I intend 
to carry it through.” 

Just for a flash, her old self blazed through her 
rigid attitude: “And to think that,, this girl, this 
stranger, should come between brother and brother, 
mother and son, smash up a family in this way. 
There is no punishment painful enough for such an 
abominable creature.” 

“I can only say again that you are looking at this 
in the wrong way, Mother. You are letting your 
feelings for Edwin make you unjust.” 

246 


SIMPLES 


She froze at once. 

“I will not argue,” she said. “Answer definitely: 
Are you going back to the Farm or not?” 

“I am not—not until I am satisfied that the right 
thing has been done.” 

“Very well,” she said. “I know how to deal with 
you.” 

She went out of the room without another word, 
iii 

At the Factory the same tension. 

Oswald was cold, aloof, had nothing at all to say. 
Alban in his own office found that the usual letters 
he attended to were not on his desk. As he had not 
fallen into the general routine since his return from 
the Farm he had nothing to do. At a loose end he 
went into Oswald’s office to discuss his future line of 
work. 

As he began to speak, Oswald said coldly. “You 
have seen your mother?” 

“I spoke with her before coming here.” 

“She told you what we had decided?” 

Alban stared, a little inclined to flare up—what 
he y Oswald, the dull-minded had decided . . . 

it was an impertinence. Though his eyes glowered 
he said evenly enough: “Mother told me she 
wanted me to go back to the Farm.” 

“And are you going?” 

“I am not going.” 

“Very well,” said Oswald, a thousand miles up in 
247 


SIMPLES 


the air. He pointedly went back to his work. Alban 
looking at his bent head with its feeble, ragged, 
thinning crown, felt inclined to laugh at the childish¬ 
ness of the fellow. 

“I take it that decides you not to give me work?” 
he said with a half laugh. 

“That is so,” said Oswald, without looking up. 

Alban did laugh. Really, this owl was too 
fatuous. 

“This is all very cheap, you know,” he said, 
“worthy of the lowest kind of kitchen novelette.” 

“As you like, but that is how things stand.” Os¬ 
wald now looked up and Alban had a fierce impulse 
to thump the heavy, stupid face. The dull pomp¬ 
ousness of the fellow! The airs the thick-brain gave 
himself! . . . Instead, he laughed again. 

“And we don’t argue with you,” Alban jeered in 
mockery. “We don’t discuss it. The command of 
Heaven has gone forth and mere mortals will kindly 
tremble and obey.” 

Oswald gaped. Exquisitely foolish in his be¬ 
wilderment, this Oswald who never could grasp any¬ 
thing until a fortnight after. He cleared his throat 
as though to speak, but said instead: “You heard 
what I said. There is nothing more to be said.” 

“We’ll see about that later,” said Alban, and he 
left the Factory. 

iv 

He was queerly elated. Why, he did not know. 
Perhaps his fighting spirit made him so. Perhaps 

248 


SIMPLES 


the feeling that now he really was at grips had some¬ 
thing to do with it. Certainly he was buoyant, more 
buoyant than Rosamund, who was inclined to view 
the encounter with anxiety. 

He laughed at the anxiety he saw in her dark eyes. 
“Don’t get scared,” he said. “They know where we 
stand, anyhow. There’ll be no more need for min¬ 
cing matters. You said there was going to be a fight. 
Well, it’s on, and it’s going to be a proper one. 
You’re not afraid of what you yourself saw coming, 
are you, Rosamund?” 

“No-o,” she said. “We must fight. It wasn’t 
exactly that. It’s their attitude, Mother’s and Os¬ 
wald’s.” 

“Pooh, Oswald. I’m not going to worry about the 
pompousness of a chump like Oswald.” 

Rosamund’s look became more anxious: “You 
know you’re wrong, Alban. You mustn’t underrate 
Oswald because he seems dense and slow.” 

“He is dense and slow,” said Alban. “I don’t 
suppose he’s ever had a bright or an original idea 
since he was born. His brain moves like a steam¬ 
roller.” 

“Oh,” she almost wailed, “don’t you see that’s it. 
It’s because his mind is so fat, dull, and slow that he’s 
dangerous, once he gets anything into it. I hate those 
slow, stubborn, mulelike minds when they are vin¬ 
dictive.” 

“Pooh,” laughed Alban again. “What can he 
do?” 


249 


SIMPLES 


“I don’t know—but a steam-roller can squash 
things.” 

“Yes, but you’ve got to lie in front of the darn 
thing to give it its chance to do it. I’m not lying in 
front of Oswald. Where can he touch me?” 

Rosamund sat back with a sigh, “And I suppose, 
after all, if you were built cautious you wouldn’t 
fight.” 

“That’s more than probable,” grinned Alban. 
“And we’re going to fight.” 

“There’s worse to come,” said Rosamund, flashing 
her glance at him. “We’re only beginning. The 
real things that are going to test you are coming.” 

Alban laughed again. “Let them come,” he said, 
not realising any special significance in her tone. 
“I’ll not let Gilda down.” 

“Don’t forget for a minute you said that,” said 
Rosamund, insistently. “I called at the Conroys this 
morning, by the way.” 

“Any news from Gilda?” 

“I didn’t see her,” said Rosamund. “She 
wouldn’t see me. She kept to her room. Not very 
well, the maid said.” 

Alban frowned a little. 

“Edwin did see her, I suppose, last night?” 

“Yes. That may be the reason, Alban.” 

Again he frowned: “Oh, well, we’re only be¬ 
ginning on Edwin, too.” Rosamund made a little 
gesture, and sighed. “What’s the matter, Rosa¬ 
mund?” he finished. 

250 


SIMPLES 


“Oh,” she said, “oh, nothing. I mustn’t blunt 
your spirit.” 

But nothing could blunt his spirit. Even the 
chilly and hostile atmosphere of the lunch table, with 
Aunt Heppie, now arrived, presiding like a stony 
and familiar ghoul, failed to disturb him. 

“I hear you are being a tomfool as usual, Alban,” 
snapped Aunt Heppie, by way of greeting. 

“As usual,” he smiled back at her. 

“It’s about time you got a little sense,” she 
snapped. 

“You know that’s impossible,” he laughed back. 
“You and I are unchanging. It’s the Kent blood.” 

His mother would once have checked him for that 
sort of thing. She did not speak. She sat cold, a 
hostile neutral. Aunt Heppie glared in arid calm. 

“Even a clodhopper of a boy should have got 
some sense of decency by your age,” she said tartly. 

“It depends on your reading of decency,” said 
Alban. “Some people spell it expediency. I don’t. 
But then I’m unwise in my generation.” 

Aunt Heppie said spaciously, “A frantic, bull¬ 
headed young Bolshevist.” 

“Names, just names, Aunt Heppie,” laughed 
Alban. “My attitude in other people might be called 
‘the final and considered opinions of aunts.’ ” 

“You talk like a parrot,” snapped Aunt Heppie. 
“All talk. Where do you think you are going to get 
to in this world with such ideas?” 

“Is that the thing that matters most, Aunt?” said 
Alban, quietly. 


251 


SIMPLES 


Aunt Heppie stared at him with a queer stillness. 
She said unexpectedly, “I’ve heard your father say 
exactly that in exactly that voice.” She peered at 
him with her cold eyes. “Yes, you’re your father 
—with a will to back you up.” 

There was a silence after that, born not so much 
of the words but of the unparallelled gentleness of 
Aunt Heppie’s tone. The silence endured through¬ 
out the clammy meal. 

v 

When Alban came in at four o’clock from a walk, 
Rosamund met him in the hall. There was a queer 
white look on her face, and she was panting a little. 

“Oh, Alban,” she cried, “I’ve been waiting for 
you with every bit in me. I’ve been yelling in my 
soul for you to come. Gilda’s here.” 

“Here?” cried Alban, feeling the tragedy in her 
voice. “Where is she?” 

“With Mother. She’s been with Mother in the 
morning-room for twenty minutes. It’s awful.” 

“Awful! Don’t be silly. Why awful?” 

Her eyes as she stared at him looked curiously big 
for her face. Her lips parted, but she had difficulty 
in speaking. Only with an effort she managed: 
“You’ll see. You’ll know!” 

“You mean she looks bad?” 

“Bad!” Rosamund choked. “She’s broken— 
smashed! That beast has broken her.” 

Alban moved towards the morning-room door. 

252 


SIMPLES 


“Had I better go in?” he asked. Rosamund 
caught his sleeve. 

“No, wait,” she whispered. “That’s Mother’s 
voice—it’s fiendish.” 

They waited in the dim hall. The loose handle of 
the morning-room door rattled. Mrs. Kent came 
out. Her cold ferocity was evident—and something 
more. Her bosom was labouring with unsuppressible 
emotion. There was a film of furious red under the 
sallow skin of her neck and cheeks. She had the 
look of a woman affronted, outraged j made utterly 
venomous by what she had been listening to. 

At the door she faced half about. “And you will 
leave this house at once,” she cried in the cruellest 
tone Alban had ever heard from her. “At once! 
I will not have you in this house for another minute.” 

She swung about again, made for the drawing¬ 
room. She ignored Rosamund and Alban, perhaps 
did not see them, though they might have touched 
her. Did not hear them, either, for though Alban 
called, “Mother, what is it?” she went blindly past 
him and into the farther room. 

Rosamund had already run from his side into the 
morning-room. Alban followed, but stopped at the 
door. 

Gilda was standing in the middle of the room. 
She was standing limply, her air an indescribable 
tragedy. Her face was awful: despair, terror, com¬ 
plete moral collapse, complete hopelessness blended 
in a look, set and terrible. It was that look which 
struck Alban inactive. It was the look of a dead 
253 


SIMPLES 


woman; worse than that, of a woman already suffer¬ 
ing the tortures of the damned. 

She stood terribly limp. Rosamund ran to her, 
touched her, and at once she exhibited an awful, a 
cringing life. She shrank back—backed from Rosa¬ 
mund’s touch. 

Rosamund reached out long thin arms, caught her 
—clumsily, gauchely, exquisitely. With uncouth 
and lovely gestures she dragged Gilda to her, forced 
her to the young breast, pulled her head down on the 
young shoulder. She fought to take the struggling 
girl to her heart. And as she fought she cried 
in a sobbing, splintered little voice: “Oh, you 
dear ... I know ... I do know . . . 
Oh, you poor dear, I do know . . . I do . . . 
I know everything . . .” 

Gilda gave in, her arm went over Rosamund’s 
thin shoulder, and she began to cry—cry . . . 

Alban slipped from the room, shutting the door. 

vi 

In the drawing-room, Mrs. Kent was before a 
graven Aunt Heppie, not walking, but making queer 
little bird hops this way and that. She was talking, 
talking; pouring out a furious, splashing stream of 
talk. Her face had a strange mottled look. Every 
now and then she gave vent to an “Ough” which 
seemed wrenched right out of her body. 

Alban watched her for a moment. He was 
strangely without feeling. He felt neither the sense 
254 


SIMPLES 


of tragedy that suddenly seemed to make everything 
black, nor elation over the fight. He was blank. 

He walked forward to speak to his mother. She 
jerked about with incredible violence, cried before 
he could speak, “Has that woman left my house?” 

“Gilda? No.” 

She glared. Was she going to strike him? She 
turned, went swiftly to the fireplace and pressed 
the bell. He suddenly realised the meaning of her 
action. She was ringing for the maid to show Gilda 
out of the house. 

“You can’t do that, you know,” he said with sur¬ 
prising calm and emphasis. 

“Can’t! . . . My own house!” She steadied 
herself. “I will not have a creature like that in my 
house ... A creature! Ough! ” 

“But, please, be sensible . . .” 

“And this,” coming up to him so that her body al¬ 
most touched his body, “and this is the woman you 
are defending. This creature . . . This shame¬ 
less— bitch” 

Alban had never heard his mother use such a 
word. The mere sound of it on her lips, the venom 
she put into it gave it a quality of unutterable vile¬ 
ness.” 

“Be silent,” he commanded. “How dare you 
talk like that?” 

“Dare,” she rapped. “I’ll dare. I’ll show you 
—all of you . . .” 

She sprang away from him to the door. The maid 
was coming upstairs. She was determined to have 
255 


SIMPLES 


her way. In the door she stopped. Rosamund was 
at the top of the stairs, Rosamund calm, firm, rigid j 
Rosamund saying quietly to the maid: “Hetty, will 
you get a taxi, please. At once, please.” 

“Hetty!” began Mrs. Kent. Rosamund crossed 
the hall. “That will do, Mother,” she said quietly. 
Firmly she pushed her mother into the room and 
closed the door. 

“That woman is to leave my house,” said Mrs. 
Kent again and furiously. 

“I am taking her home, Mother,” said Rosamund, 
firm, cold, immobile all the time. 

“You will do nothing of the sort,” cried Mrs. 
Kent. Rosamund did not answer. 

“Do you hear?” shouted Mrs. Kent. “I will not 
have it.” 

“Will you get my hat and coat, please, Alban?” 
said Rosamund. 

“Stop,” cried Mrs. Kent as Alban went towards 
the door. “So you defy me too— you?” 

“I’m not defying you,” said Rosamund, coldly. 
“Somebody must take Gilda home. She is not fit to 
go alone.” 

“That is her own lookout,” said Mrs. Kent. “I 
have no pity for that type of woman. And I will 
not have a daughter of mine consorting with such a 
creature.” 

Rosamund’s lips tightened. She did not speak 
however. 

“If you choose to go with that—that vile thing, 
256 


SIMPLES 


you do so at your peril. This house is not for you. 
You do not enter it again.” 

“Very well,” said Rosamund. She looked at 
Alban, a signal to get her outdoor things. But Mrs. 
Kent had not finished: “Utterly shameless!” she 
began. “A worthy companion of that low thing. 
Well, I wash my hands of you. She has succeeded 
in bringing ruin to this house. She has turned two 
of my children against me. She has caused bitterness 
and trouble . . . She comes here with this vile 
accusation against a son of mine ... Go with 
her, then. If you prefer a creature so debased to 
your own mother, if you love this strumpet more 
than me . . .” 

Alban found himself trembling. “What’s that 
you are saying, Mother?” 

Aunt Heppie acidly: “You’re a fool, Agnes. 
Raving on like this when they don’t know.” 

Mrs. Kent stopped, gasped, stared. Rosamund 
said coldly: “I know.” 

Both the older women cried: “You know —you 
know?” 

Rosamund nodded. 

“You know that this gel is about to be the mother 
of an illegitimate child?” said Aunt Heppie, with ap¬ 
palling distinctness. 

“Good God! ” cried Alban. 

“He didn’t know, anyhow,” said Aunt Heppie 
with a sniff at Mrs. Kent. 

Alban was standing before his mother. “I don’t 
believe it,” he cried, while something dreadful in 
257 


SIMPLES 


him believed it only too sickeningly. “I don’t be¬ 
lieve it.” 

His mother said with a scornful snort, “Ask your 
sister. She believes it. She knows.” 

“Rosamund?” 

“It’s true,” said Rosamund. 

Alban took a step between the three women. He 
looked from one to the other with a mad, unnerved 
glance. He looked at the set face of Rosamund. 
Yes, it was true, absolutely true. 

Suddenly he lifted his clenched fists and his face 
convulsed: “The damned cur,” he shouted. “The 
damned, bloody cur . . . Where is he? Is he 

here? Tell me where I can get at him . . .” 

His mother’s voice, shrill with hysteria screamed: 
“There you go. Your brother . . . You’ll be¬ 

lieve any dirty-minded little slut rather than your 
brother . . . She can befoul his name 5 she can 

try her tricks to get hold of him, his money, and you 
believe her. A woman like that, who lies as readily 
as she does, goes with any man as though . . .” 

Alban swung on her. “Shut up,” he snarled. 
“Keep your foul tongue quiet . . . Do you want 
me to loathe you more than I do now . . . ?” 

His mother ran before the animal ferocity of his 
face. She backed and sidled away from his, and her 
mouth dropped open in fear. He looked like 
murder. He stood glaring at her. 

There was a sound of brakes outside the house. 
Rosamund touched Alban’s arm. 

“I’ll go straight away without a hat,” she said. 
258 


SIMPLES 


“Come round to the Conroys in half an hour. Bring 
some of my clothes . . . Or, it doesn’t matter. 

I’ll tell you about them then.” Her hand gripped 
his arm tightly for an instant, and she was gone. 

They heard the door across the hall open, the 
handle of the front door rattle. Mrs. Kent with a 
sudden fierceness started towards the door. Alban 
barred her way. With his body firmly across the 
door opening and his arms a little spread, he pre¬ 
vented all exit. 

So they stood glaring at each other until they 
heard the taxi drive away. 


259 


Qhapter XII 


i 

R OSAMUND herself opened the Conroys’ door: 

“You’re late,” she said to Alban. “I expected 
you two hours ago.” 

She stood aside to let him enter. 
a I know,” he muttered. “I’ve been walking. I 
went out and walked—and forgot.” 

He made no movement, stood beyond the step, 
throwing, now and then, a glance into the house. 

“Come in,” said Rosamund, her quick eyes assess¬ 
ing his condition of mind. “You won’t meet Gilda. 
She’s gone to bed.” 

He looked at her, saw insistence, hard insistence 
in her eyes, came in slowly. 

He stood hesitating, while she closed the door. 
“Sit down,” she said. “Help yourself to that 
whiskey. Mr. Conroy understands—and he won’t 
be coming in. This is between you and me alone.” 

He obeyed, but she had to help him to whiskey. 
He was sitting white-faced, curiously blank, curi¬ 
ously battered. He was loose and numb. She 
looked at him for a long moment, holding the 
whiskey. When she put it into his hand he merely 
held it, staring at the carpet. 

“Drink it, Alban.” 


260 


SIMPLES 

He drank it in a gulp, sat holding the glass. She 
took it from him. Stood over him. 

“You’re blaming Gilda,” she said. 

“I can’t understand it,” he said in a mutter. “I 
can’t. How could she—a girl like Gilda, do a thing 
like that?” 

“You’re not to blame her, Alban,” she said. “You 
mustn’t.” 

“Not blaming her exactly.” His voice was tone¬ 
less. “It’s just that I don’t understand . . . It’s 
horrible. To happen to her. To her! I feel sick 
at the idea . . . physically. To her ... of 
all women. I feel nausea . . . nausea.” Act¬ 

ually he began to shudder with a queer, uncheckable 
violence. 

Rosamund slipped onto the arm of his chair. Her 
young arm went about his head and cheek, its thin, 
smooth softness cool against his burning skin. She 
pulled his head strongly against the hollow of her 
body, the stayless body, strong, flexible, soft, restful. 

“I know, dear,” she said. “I know, dear. It’s 
hell to think about . . . and it’s so unfair. But 
you mustn’t blame Gilda. It’s so cruel of you.” 

“I’m not cruel,” he said. “But I don’t understand. 
It’s like seeing her in slime. How could she go down 
into it? It seems so impossible.” 

“We haven’t been tempted, Alban. How can we 
understand?” 

“But a girl like Gilda, you’d think she’d be proof 
against anything like that.” 

“We don’t know,” said Rosamund. “We’ve never 
261 


SIMPLES 


been through anything like that. And perhaps she 
did resist, perhaps the other girls did too, but Edwin 
is too expert.” 

“Don’t,” cried Alban, “that’s too beastly.” Under 
the jar of it he had become more alert. Perhaps 
Rosamund had expected him to. 

“We’ve got to face facts,” she said. “You’ve got 
to see where the real blame lies. With us, I think.” 

“Us?” 

“Yes. We allowed a girl like Gilda to become the 
prey of a man like Edwin.” 

Alban was certainly alert now. 

“You mean she ought to have been warned? She 
ought to have been told what sort of man Edwin 
was?” 

“I’m certain of it . . . It was like caging an 

unsuspecting lamb with a hungry tiger.” 

Alban stared at her: “That is what I said. Did 
you know I wanted them—Oswald and Mother— 
to tell her in the beginning?” 

“Yes, I knew. By us I don’t actually mean you. 
I mean Mother, Oswald—me even. Yes, me. I 
was her best friend. I could have done something, 
if only drop hints. But I funked it, just as Mother 
and Oswald funked it. Only I’m worse ... I 
saw where moral duty lay—and funked.” 

“For the matter of that,” he said evenly, always 
ready to defend other people rather than himself, 
“I should have said something too, to Mr. Conroy, 
for instance.” 

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I don’t know. That 
262 


SIMPLES 


was so obviously Oswald’s province . . . Any¬ 

how, nobody did, and Gilda has suffered. So if 
there’s any blame, we’re in for it, too.” 

“I see that,” said Alban, in a firmer voice. “And 
it all arose because—because—” 

“Because Edwin is a damned past-master in the 
handling of women,” said Rosamund, fiercely. 

“Ah, she’s told you?” 

“Gilda?” Rosamund was surprised. “Nothing! 
She’s told me practically nothing. She wouldn’t, you 
know.” 

“But you know?” 

“I guessed.” She saw his eyes. “Lots of little 
things told me, little things building up to a con¬ 
clusion. Gilda’s insisting on marrying a man like 
Edwin, when Edwin was cold-shouldering her 
. . . not like her. Her powdering. Her anxiety 
about her appearance. The way she jumped when 
you said she looked pinched . . .” 

“But I can’t see any clue in that. I’ve been over 
it, and can’t.” 

“No,” she smiled wanly. “You can’t. Queer, 
isn’t it? You missed it, and it was the first thing that 
hit me. That’s just the difference between a woman 
and a man.” 

“A woman, maybe, but you seeing something—a 
kid!” 

“A modern kid,” she smiled. “A modern female 
kid. We know an awful lot 5 a swing-back from the 
Victorian, virgin, know-nothing-at-all. The modern 
girl knows all about sex, anyhow the surface facts. I 
263 


SIMPLES 


daresay the Victorian girl did too—but only as a 
sort of sticky thrill. We do it solemnly, discuss it 
coldly and realistically—analyse the damn unanalys¬ 
able thing. Daresay we get the same sort of joy out 
of the talk as the hushed simpers of the Victorians. 
And for the same reason. We like talking about it 
—the attack and method is different, that is all. We 
are facty you see. And frightfully wise in our teens. 
Can spot the signs in a flash. The things you said 
about Gilda gave the signs; that and Gilda’s attitude, 
and what I guessed had happened at Iamouth all 
added up . . . Added up right, too. The poor 

darling.” 

“Iamouth. Are you saying . . . ?” 

“That’s where it happened,” said Rosamund, 
finally. 

Alban stood up and walked to the window. Again 
nausea had hold of him. Presently, “She told you 
it happened at Iamouth?” His face was sick and 
white as it turned to her. 

“Alban, you know Gilda wouldn’t tell me things 
like that. She’s not the telling sort—no maker of 
cheap confidences. She told Mother because she was 
desperate, terrified to death. She was cornered 
. . . And I’ll bet when she told Mother she took 
half the blame on herself, more perhaps . . 

“No, don’t speculate,” cried Alban. “You said 
it—you said Iamouth. Why? I noticed nothing at 
Iamouth.” 

“Enough to convince me, anyhow,” said Rosa¬ 
mund. “The whole business of Iamouth was a de- 
264 


SIMPLES 


liberate trap of Edwin’s. You can read that like a 
book.” 

“I can’t,” said Alban, wearily. “Tell me.” 

“I won’t say that Gilda hasn’t dropped a hint or 
two—unconsciously,” said Rosamund. “But they 
only make certain the obvious. Edwin planned to 
get Gilda at Iamouth. It’s all plain. You know I 
wrote you about the queer state Gilda was in. How 
she was helpless before Edwin. Edwin had reduced 
her to that condition. All that snubbing of his, all 
that staying away from her, all the philandering with 
Mrs. Hogarth—all part of his game, the game he 
knows so well, to work on her feelings, weaken her.” 

“Not deliberately.” 

“Deliberately. Do you know it was Edwin who 
told Gilda of Mrs. Hogarth, of her attractions . . .” 

“No, no, Rosamund, I can’t believe that, even of 
Edwin.” 

“You’ll have to. It’s fact. It’s one of the things 
Gilda has let drop. Edwin reduced her to helpless¬ 
ness before him—to moral pulp. I don’t under¬ 
stand the state, thank God, but there it was. She 
was a bundle of terrors. She was scared to death at 
the idea of losing him.” 

“The fear of loss—that’s what you wrote. I 
didn’t understand it. I don’t quite understand it 
now. In the first days at Iamouth I felt that she 
was not so much in love with him as before, I felt she 
had become disillusioned even.” 

“I think she had—with her mind. I don’t think 
she was in love with him any more —that way. It 
265 


SIMPLES 


was something physical, outside her reason. No, I 
don’t understand it either, but there it was. Some¬ 
thing that controlled her simply grew panicky at the 
more idea of losing him— him , understand, not his 
position or money or anything but him. The phy¬ 
sical him, maybe. When he played on that fear, as 
he knew how to play, she was simply will-less before 
him, clay in his hand, his creature. And he knew. 
And he knew . . .” 

She was silent for a moment. 

“It’s a ghastly thing to be mastered like that by a 
love—by a passion, an infatuation. I don’t suppose 
it’d happen to me. I’m too cold. Oh, well, that’s 
speculation again. Gilda—Gilda knew the risk, a 
little, I think. She did offer to break things off. Or 
perhaps that was only her mind—before the other 
thing submerged it. But, of course, he wouldn’t 
have that.” 

“You say ‘of course’?” 

“Because he hadn’t got what he wanted,” she said, 
with a snap. “Because he hadn’t hit at you perhaps.” 

“Me?” Alban was startled. 

“It’s been sheer pleasure to him all along,” said 
Rosamund, “that you loved Gilda and he was her 
master. He’s hated you always.” She paused be¬ 
fore going on. “It’s easy to read the Edwins of the 
world, just plain, simple, brutish, hunting animal 
. . . Woman hunting. I suppose he was jaded with 
coarser types when his eyes found Gilda, or maybe 
he wanted to cut you out, or maybe again—we’d 
better give the devil his due—Gilda’s distinction and 
266 


SIMPLES 


beauty did call to some remnant of fineness in him. 
He saw her as the beau ideal wife, however amusing 
the other sort were. Or maybe it was mere hunting 
instinct all over again, with the added zest of pulling 
down a finer prey. Anyhow, he hunted and pulled 
her down, down to the level of an engagement. And 
then the hunting was over and he was dull and 
bored.” 

She played with a glass. 

“I’ve met the type, seen it. . . . Most girls know 
it. Hunting is the thing that excites that sort. After 
the capture the zest goes out of them. That’s what 
happened to Edwin. If he ever thought he could 
play the part of a sober, engaged man, he soon 
found he was wrong. They hadn’t a scrap in com¬ 
mon, you see, their minds were miles apart. They 
couldn’t even talk to each other in the same 
language. He was bored, bored. But he couldn’t 
give her up. He had won this splendid girl, but he 
couldn’t give her up—not to you, for instance. He 
couldn’t bear the thought of giving her up to you. 
And then there was the other thing. The beastly 
thing. He’d got her . . . but not entirely, not as 
entirely as he was used to having women. And until 
he’d got her that way, he couldn’t count his triumph, 
his hunting, his supremacy over his victim com¬ 
plete.” 

“It’s vile, the thing you are suggesting. I can’t 
bear your talking of it,” cried Alban. 

“Facts, Alban—face them. You’ve got to with 
the Edwins of this world. With them it isn’t love 
267 


SIMPLES 


of women—it’s desire of women. It’s in their 
bodies. They must have the—the whole thing. 
Must! That was why Edwin wouldn’t give Gil da 
up.” 

“But he—he couldn’t compare her with the dis¬ 
gusting women of his conquests?” cried Alban. 

“He did. We have the result. Facts, Alban. 
You can’t get away from what was in Edwin’s mind 
because of what he has done. . . . He had to do it 
cleverly with a nature like Gilda’s, that was part of 
the pleasure in it. A long battle . . . wearing 
Gilda down. . . . Weakening her with this terror 
of loss . . . troubling her with suggestions that she 
could not really be in love with him because she was 
too cold. Trying to get her on the rebound when 
he was kind . . .” 

“Don’t,” cried Alban. “It’s disgusting.” 

“A long process,” she went on implacably, “it had 
to be with a girl like Gilda. But his skill and ex¬ 
perience beat her innocence, her trust in the cur. 
Iamouth. . . . He played her at Iamouth. Let 
her swing away from him as far as she could—he 
knew the swing back would be as sweeping . . .” 

“The pendulum nature ... I remember I was 
afraid of that myself,” said Alban. 

“He counted on it. He knew Gilda’s ardent, 
‘giving’ nature. That deliberate delay in coming 
down to Iamouth—he knew how that would swing 
her into the depths. Then the deliberate produc¬ 
tion of the Hogarth woman, Gilda’s acknowledged 
rival, the—the woman who—who looked, anyhow, 
268 


SIMPLES 


as though she would not be checked by—by squeam¬ 
ishness. Down she was, agonised, terrified at the 
closeness of that threat of loss, weak in his hands 
. . . absolutely without strength and defence against 
his sly, damned, vile, skilful attack. Snatching at 
the chance—any chance—of holding him. . . . And 
so he won.” 

She got up, walked to the corner in which Gilda 
herself had hidden. 

“And he won,” she said, her voice breaking. “He 
played on that dear’s sweetest feelings with his vilest. 
She gave to him because she wanted to be all his. He 
won. His game was over and he left the field.” 

She curled herself up, pulled out her handkerchief 
and—cried. 

ii 

Half an hour went by before Alban said in a quiet, 
precise, if lifeless, voice. 

“How does it stand now?” 

“Edwin came round here last night and told her 
that he had no intention of marrying her.” 

“What did he say about the—child?” 

Alban’s voice was so clear, so even, so awfully 
even, that Rosamund straightened and peered 
through the darkness at his face. She saw it against 
the dark mauve of the window, its long lines as rigid 
as carven stone, the angles sharp and cruel in their 
precision. 

“He says the child isn’t his.” 

The grim head nodded. 

269 


SIMPLES 


“Did he say anything about his intentions?” 

“He snapped his fingers at her. Told her to do 
her worst. He was brute to the last. He prac¬ 
tically told her that he intended to marry Mrs. 
Hogarth quickly, and that he was prepared to fight 
any claims she made. Of course, he knows a girl 
like Gilda won’t go to law.” 

Alban moved into the room. 

“All right,” he said evenly. “Can we have some 
light? I put my hat down somewhere.” 

Rosamund switched on the light, but stood staring 
at him: a slip of a thing, red-eyed, smeared, mottled, 
unashamed. She stared and his grim, set look 
brought fear into her eyes. She came up to him, 
put her hand on an arm that was as unyielding as 
drawn steel. In a panic she began talking again. 

“Gilda did not mean to give way. But she felt 
cornered: simply swamped by panic. She cried all 
night—all the morning. She was crying when I 
called round, that’s why she couldn’t see me. . . . 
She was desperate. There seemed no way out. 
There seemed nothing to do except go straight to 
Mother. It was the only thing she could do— 
except commit suicide. She was beside herself. She 
went to Mother, not to accuse Edwin, but to get 
Mother to persuade Edwin. It was to be a secret 
between Mother and her—but you see she had to do 
it. What else was there to do?” 

“I think she did right,” he said in his inflexible 
voice. “It wasn’t wrong going, the wrong was in 
the way Mother took it.” 

270 


SIMPLES 


She stared at him for a long minute. 

“Alban—Alban,” she cried, clinging to him. 
“Don’t blame Gilda. . . . Don’t blame her. She’s 
sweet still . . . clean. . . . And if you only saw 
her.” 

“I’m not blaming her, my dear,” he said. 

“But you’re so hard,” she moaned. 

“Yes,” he said, “I am. I’ve gone to stone. I 
can’t feel.” 

“Don’t be hard against Gilda.” 

“Not against her,” he said. He moved a step, 
stood rigid again. “Tell Gilda, if she wishes to 
hear, that I am on her side. I will always be on her 
side. And I’m going to fight for her.” 

“Is that all?” 

“And I haven’t changed,” he went on, as though 
she had not spoken. “I’ve gone hard, but not against 
her. This makes no difference between us. I’m— 
I’m her champion always.” 

He stood, lips taut, looking down at the carpet. 
“That’s all,” he said. 

Rosamund said, “Here’s your hat, dear.” 

“Thanks. I’ll bring round, or send round your 
clothes to-morrow morning.” 

iii 

Mrs. Kent and Oswald were in the morning-room 
when he reached home. They were in conference, 
and unmistakably the conference concerned Edwin 
and the revelations of the afternoon. 

271 


SIMPLES 


When Alban walked in on them, Oswald shuffled 
back nervously, fussily, in his chair, and Mrs. Kent 
stared with cheeks growing red and puffy. 

Alban said with his curious new rigidity, “Where 
is Edwin?” 

Mrs. Kent said, no less frigidly, “Your brother 
and I are talking privately. Please leave us, 
Alban.” 

“He isn’t in the house,” said Alban. “Is he at 
Brackenhurst?” 

“Where Edwin is,” said Mrs. Kent, “does not con¬ 
cern you. You will kindly not interfere in this 
matter at all.” 

“It is my affair, too,” said Alban. “Have you 
sent for him?” 

“Oswald,” said Mrs. Kent, “will you take your 
brother out of the room and shut the door.” 

Alban looked from one to the other, as Oswald, 
unwillingly, rose. “If you don’t answer my ques¬ 
tion, I take the next train to Brackenhurst.” 

Mrs. Kent bounced up: “This is beyond any¬ 
thing—an outrage on decency. Understand, Alban, 
you have already gone too far in this matter. I will 
have no more interference from you. You’ve al¬ 
ready done harm enough.” 

“You’re an infernal, uppish little swine,” snapped 
Oswald, at last coming forward. “You’ve got noth¬ 
ing to do with this. Keep your meddling hands out 
of it. Your mother and I are dealing with it.” 

“You haven’t answered me,” he said. “Is Edwin 
coming here, or do I go down to Brackenhurst?” 

272 


SIMPLES 


Mother and eldest son exchanged a rapid glance. 
Each glance said: “He will go down. He’ll 
thrash Edwin in the publican woman’s house even 
. . . There’ll be a scandal. We must stop that.” 

“You are being unwarrantably impertinent,” 
snapped Mrs. Kent. “Unwarrantable. I shall not 
forget or forgive it. . . . Who are you, to think 
that you are the only one to take action? Imperti¬ 
nence. We sent for your brother three hours ago. 
He will be here in the morning. And even when he 
does come we intend to brook no more of this mis¬ 
chief-making from you. ... You do not come 
into . . .” 

But Alban had not stopped to listen. At the in¬ 
formation that Edwin was coming on the morrow, 
he turned and left the room. 

iv 

He was told nothing about the meeting between 
Edwin and his mother and brother, but intuition, 
with a queer sort of clarity that was working in a 
mind numb and stony, told him that when his mother 
slipped out of the back of the house, she was going 
to the Factory. 

He went to the Factory and had the satisfaction 
of seeing her erect, stout figure entering the gate 
ahead of him. 

He was walking like a creature of stone. Even 
movement was a blunted sensation. He was stone 
all through. He couldn’t feel. He couldn’t feel 
273 


SIMPLES 


this terrible thing about Gilda. He tried to. He 
had put the whole thing before his mind in a series 
of pictures, but he hadn’t reacted. Neither pity, nor 
anger, nor disgust had thrilled him. He had be¬ 
come a stone automaton, knowing only, and me¬ 
chanically, what he must do, what he must make 
Edwin and the family do to save Gilda. 

He walked straight through the office into 
Oswald’s inner room, arriving just as Oswald was 
wondering whether his mother’s simple strategy had 
been enough, whether he ought not to lock his door 
to keep Alban out. 

He sprang up angrily when Alban entered, and 
came round his desk threatening. “We don’t want 
you in here,” he snapped. “Get out of here.” 

Alban said evenly, “I’m staying.” 

“Do you want me to call the clerks and have you 
put out?” 

“It’s the only way you’ll get me out,” said Alban, 
evenly. “And I’ll fight, too.” 

Once more looks flashed between the mother and 
the eldest son, looks saying, “The scandal of it, avoid 
that at all costs.” 

Oswald drew back towards his desk. Mrs. Kent 
was thinking rapidly, tight-lipped. She was think¬ 
ing, “If we took a taxi back to the house we might 
lock ourselves in the morning-room before the little 
beast followed us.” 

Alban knew what she was thinking. “I am going 
to be present at this meeting, mother,” he said, pre¬ 
cisely, “if I have to break my way into it.” 

274 


SIMPLES 


Mrs. Kent flashed a dark look of sheer hate at 
him. Edwin, who had been crouching in a chair, the 
sneer on his face a curtain over his fear, sniggered. 
He said: 

“He’s made up his mind, Mother. He probably 
has his own reason for it. It may be wise to let him 
stay.” 

Edwin had already made up his mind as to the 
line he would take. Alban helped that line. Edwin 
showed that he was going to attack rather than de¬ 
fend directly they were seated, directly Mrs. Kent 
said, “You know why we sent for you, Edwin?” 

“Oh,” he sneered, “Gilda, of course.” 

Mrs. Kent’s fingers drummed on Oswald’s desk. 

“I won’t have that tone,” she said. “It is a grave 
matter, a terrible matter. This—this girl makes a 
horrible accusation against you.” 

“Don’t I know it?” he said wearily. “Haven’t I 
seen her? She tried it on me.” 

Mrs. Kent and Oswald looked up quickly. It was 
plain to see the hope, the satisfaction in their eyes. 

“It’s not true?” cried Mrs. Kent, breathing 
quickly. 

“You. are putting words into his mouth,” said 
Alban, evenly. 

“Stop that. Let your brother speak,” cried 
Oswald. “You understand what this means, Edwin? 
This girl accused you of a terrible thing, a horrible 
thing . . .” 

“I know,” said Edwin, carrying the attack into the 
enemy quarters with an air of weary indifference. 
275 


SIMPLES 


“She says she’s going to have a child by me. It’s 
a lie.” 

He glanced swiftly out of the corner of his pert 
eyes at Alban, as he said this. Alban was unmoving, 
his glance steady upon Edwin. Edwin’s eyes im¬ 
mediately ran away from those eyes. 

“Edwin,” cried his mother, “you declare it isn’t 
true?” 

“Of course it isn’t true.” 

“Edwin,” said Oswald between his knowledge of 
what must be the truth and his satisfaction at a chance 
of dodging it, “be careful, this is a very serious busi¬ 
ness. You are ready to swear to it?” 

“Good God!” cried Edwin, irritably. “Do you 
want me to go on repeating ‘It’s a lie! It’s a blasted 
lie’ all day? Isn’t once enough for you?” 

“It isn’t,” said Alban, quietly. “They don’t be¬ 
lieve you. No sane person could. You have ‘liar’ 
written all over you.” 

“That is enough, Alban,” said Mrs. Kent, icily. 
“I believe him. I believe my own son.” 

Alban looked at her steadily. She bridled under 
the cold glance. 

“You know he is lying,” he said evenly. 

“Edwin’s word is as good as that creature’s,” she 
answered hotly. 

“It isn’t, and you know it isn’t,” said Alban. 

“I won’t argue with you,” she snapped. “Your 
mind is perverted. You would take the side of any¬ 
body against your own family.” 

276 


SIMPLES 


“I know, as you know, that Edwin is lying, and 
that Gilda is not,” said Alban. 

“Pah!” she cried. “A creature of that sort! A 
woman who can behave as she behaved will stoop to 
any lie, just as she will stoop to anything to capture 
a rich husband. Do you think Pm going to pay the 
slightest attention to a strumpet?” 

Oswald shifted nervously at his desk. His mother 
was going much too far, he thought—very much too 
far with a madman like Alban. His eyes appealed 
to his mother, warned her, shifted to Alban. Alban 
was staring at Mrs. Kent, his glance too sombre even 
for contempt. 

“She is what your son made her,” he said without 
emotion. 

“My son,” she sneered, “and your own brother, 
too. You believe anything against your own 
brother.” 

“There’s his record,” said Alban. “When a girl 
of Gilda’s kind gives her word against a man like 
Edwin, we have no choice but to believe her.” 

“And pretty anxious you are to fasten this on to 
me, too, I don’t doubt,” sneered Edwin. 

Alban swivelled quickly round in his chair. Edwin 
shrank back a little before the fierce significance of 
the motion. Oswald said quickly: “No personali¬ 
ties now. We’ll have none of that sort of thing. 
We’re here to get to the bottom of this calmly . . . 
see what’s to be done.” 

“We’ve got to the bottom of it,” snarled Edwin, 
rising. “I’ve given the girl the lie direct. I’ve 
277 


SIMPLES 


finished with it, and that’s all that’s got to be said.” 

Alban, without rising, said coldly: “You’re going 
to marry her, Edwin. Don’t make any mistake. 
You may lie and bluff as you like, but the truth is 
apparent. You’re going to marry her.” 

Edwin turned on him, his teeth bared: “You be 
damned for a stinking, interfering fool. I know 
who I’m going to marry, and it won’t be your Gilda.” 

“You’re going to marry her,” repeated Alban, 
with his terrible evenness. “You’ve behaved like 
the cad you are, but you are going to keep your word 
and marry her. Understand, there’s going to be no 
getting out of that. You’re going to marry her. 
You’ve got to repair the harm you did at Iamouth.” 

“Iamouth,” cried Edwin, suddenly leering in his 
smile. “So you fix it at Iamouth, do you? How 
damned convenient.” 

“She said it was at Iamouth,” said Oswald, quickly, 
for he saw the look that had come into Alban’s eyes. 

“She naturally had to,” sneered Edwin. “I 
wasn’t the only one at Iamouth.” 

Alban rose very slowly from the chair. Mrs. 
Kent rose, too. She cried: “That’s enough of this. 
We’ve heard enough. It is finished. We’ll go 
home now. Boys—come . . .” 

Alban was standing in front of Edwin, his eyes 
burning into his face. 

“You marry Gilda Conroy. Understand!” he 
said tonelessly. 

“I’ll see you to hell,” snarled Edwin. He backed 
away a pace. His face became a leering mask of 
278 


SIMPLES 


evil. “You fool,” he spat. “Do you think I intend 
to father my own brother’s bastard!” 

Mrs. Kent gave a little cry. Alban sprang. 

v 

Edwin, ready for it, snatched a round ebony ruler 
and lashed at his brother’s head. The blow glanced 
down the temple, tore Alban’s cheek open. 

He came straight on as though he had not felt it. 
Edwin lashed again, struck a shoulder, and Alban’s 
fist caught him full in the mouth. He staggered 
and Alban struck again, a lifting blow under the chin. 
Edwin flung the ruler, which sang by Alban’s head, 
and in return received a punch that knocked him 
right across the desk. 

He fell in a chaos of papers, and Alban was on 
top of him. Alban’s hands were at his throat, and 
they gripped, and gripped again. Edwin moved 
with arms and feet. It was like beating with straws 
at a vice. He kneed Alban in the stomach. Alban 
lifted him, lifted him by the throat and shook him 
as a dog worries a bone. He shifted the body on the 
desk so that he could throttle without interruption, 
and dug in again, his elbows stiffening to a terrible 
rigidity. 

Edwin let out a thick, choking scream of panic, his 
face became purple and congested, his eyes began 
to roll. Oswald dashed at Alban, tried to pull his 
hands loose. 


279 


SIMPLES 


“My God,” he shouted. “My God, he’s killing 
him!” He yelled for the clerks. 

Clerks came rushing in. They saw Edwin with 
a face that looked almost black, and Alban with 
features calm and graven steadily throttling the life 
out of him. They saw Oswald ineffectually trying to 
loosen that iron grip. 

He yelled again: “Quick, for the love of God. 
He’s killing him. Pull him off. . . . It’ll be 
murder.” 

Two clerks flung themselves on Alban, began to 
fight his terrific, immobile strength. They all went 
crashing across the office, spilling chairs as they stag¬ 
gered, but Alban still hung on. A clerk who knew 
something about wrestling, got his iarm between 
Alban’s arms, and with a twisting leverage broke 
the deadly hold. 

Edwin went flopping to the floor and lay disgust¬ 
ingly, his limbs twitching. But he wasn’t dead. 
They all stood looking down at him as Oswald made 
sure of that, the clerks holding Alban’s arms. 

Oswald’s sweating face turned to them. 

“All right,” he said with relief. “But, by God, 
a near thing.” 

Alban, with a single gesture, shrugged the clerks 
from him. Picking up his hat, he went out. 


280 


Qhapter XIII 


i 

G ILD A herself, quite suddenly, quite unexpect¬ 
edly, came into the room. 

Rosamund, with her arm about Alban’s neck, had 
been listening to his version of what had happened. 
She’d heard something about it. It seemed many 
people had heard. 

He had said: “I went off—walking again. Just 
blindly, you know. I didn’t realise where I was un¬ 
til I was miles away, in the Forest. When I got 
home it was past midnight. I didn’t see anybody. 
This morning it was the same. My breakfast was 
brought to my room—pointedly—by Camillus. I 
didn’t want to talk, but I don’t suppose he would 
have if I’d tried him. . . . Nobody downstairs, 
everybody keeping out of my way, of course. So I 
came out again. Came here.” 

“Edwin’s better—we’ve heard that. Quite all 
right, in fact,” said Rosamund. 

“Oh, is he?” said Alban, in a voice of complete 
indifference. 

“He—he was seen going off to Brackenhurst 
again,” said Rosamund, nervously. 

“That’ll make no difference,” said Alban, evenly. 
“He knows that now.” 


281 


SIMPLES 


Rosamund made a little gesture of despair. 
“What’s the good, Alban,” she moaned. “You can’t 
make him marry Gilda.” 

“I haven’t finished with him yet,” said Alban. 
“He knows that.” 

“Even if he marries her,” said Rosamund, staring 
blankly ahead. “What a life for her—it’ll be 
horrible.” 

Alban stirred uneasily. “I thought of that, too,” 
he said, “while he was sitting in front of me, spit¬ 
ting his filth. The mere idea of her marrying a 
fellow like that is revolting. He’s brute all through, 
you know, Rosamund. Men who live as he does 
become like that. Whatever spark of decency he 
ever had has gone. And to marry a man like 
that . . .” 

“You can’t bear the thought, either,” said Rosa¬ 
mund, softly. 

“It makes me sick. But there it is, he owes it to 
her.” 

“If there was only another way out,” said Rosa¬ 
mund. 

“But there isn’t,” he said. “There isn’t. I’ve 
thought and thought, but it’s the bottom of a sack. 
I’ve even thought of carrying her right out of all this 
vileness to Margaretting, and—and hiding her 
there.” 

“She wouldn’t go there,” said Rosamund, slowly. 

Alban looked up, and she knew the words had 
pained him, pained him without his quite under- 
282 


SIMPLES 


standing why, as is the manner with men. And she 
was glad. 

“I suppose not,” he said quietly. “The associa¬ 
tions would be terrible.” 

“Not that,” she said gently, and her hand began 
to play with his hair. “It’s you. Since this hap¬ 
pened she’s begun to realise you. It’s dawned on 
her that she’s always been in love with you.” 

He put up his hand, caught hers, stopped it. 
“You mustn’t say things like that, Rosamund,” he 
said very soberly. 

“No,” she murmured. “No, I suppose not. . . . 
But it’s interesting . . . and sad, too. Just when 
this makes all the difference . . 

His hand gripped so tight on hers that she stopped. 
He was quiet for a minute. Then he said as though 
he could not argue against the irrevocable: 

“But, you see, it doesn’t make any difference, 
Rosamund. Somehow it doesn’t. I don’t know if 
it should or shouldn’t—I only know it doesn’t. I 
suppose . . . once having got to love her I can’t get 
out of it. I love her now, just the same. The— 
the other thing, it’s as though it had nothing to do 
with her. ... I don’t know whether you under¬ 
stand, Rosamund ...” 

Rosamund’s fingers twisted themselves tight 
round his. She pulled his head towards her. Pres¬ 
ently . . . “I’m glad you love her, Alban. I’m 
glad right through me . . 

It was then they found that Gilda had entered the 
room—at what instant they did not know. 

283 


SIMPLES 


ii 

She stood inside the door, and she hadn’t changed 
at all. It was as he had said, this thing that had 
happened seemed to have had nothing to do with her. 
she stood slim, pliant, sweet, beautiful, with her old 
air of delicate distinction. Only in her eyes could he 
see a change. It was fear, she was afraid—afraid 
of him. 

He sprang up, and she seemed to shrink away 
from him—pitiably. She cried quickly, as though 
to stop his coming near her. 

“It’s about you and Edwin, Alban. I’ve heard 
what has happened. Oh, you mustn’t . . . you 
must never do that again.” 

Alban was at her side. “You shouldn’t have been 
told, Gilda,” he said. “You must not be worried.” 

Her hands were gripped in front of her. “I won’t 
come between brother and brother,” she cried, her 
eyes agonised. “Oh, Alban—don’t add that to it.” 

“I’m sorry I hurt Edwin,” said Alban, quietly. 
“I didn’t mean to when we began our talk.” 

“It’s not that,” she said. “Its because he’s your 
brother. I can’t bear the thought of that—my caus¬ 
ing this strife in your family.” 

“The family don’t look at it quite so decently,” 
said Rosamund. “Don’t worry about them, Gilda.” 

It was Alban who checked Rosamund. What she 
said was just, maybe, but it wasn’t the thing to have 
weight with Gilda. He said quietly: “A certain 
284 


SIMPLES 


•amount of strife can’t be avoided, Gilda. These 
things have to be faced.” 

“Please, Alban,” she whispered. “No more of it 
for my sake.” 

“My dear,” he said, “we have to go through a 
rough time to straighten this thing out. It can’t be 
helped. We’ve got to see it through, however much 
we hate it.” 

“No,” she murmured, “no more, please, Alban. 
I’ve caused enough trouble among you as it is. I 
cannot allow more. I will not.” 

“We’ve got to look after your interests, Gilda,” he 
persisted. 

She stood before him, white-faced now, her fluent 
body held rigid by her will. She said slowly, as 
though forcing the words out one by one, “My in¬ 
terests have ceased.” 

Alban, not understanding, frowned. Rosamund 
slipped out of the room. 

“My interests have ceased,” she said evenly. 
“That’s another reason why you must not go on. 
I don’t want Edwin to marry me any more.” 

“Gilda!” he cried. 

“I’ve been thinking it out,” she said. “The way 
your mother and Edwin took what I told them has 
helped me to decide. I’m not expecting Edwin to 
marry me. It would be impossible.” 

“Gilda, you don’t know what you are saying.” 

“I know. I see things clearly now. I went to 
your mother in a panic. I was mad with fright, but 
it seemed to me the only thing to do. I thought 
285 


SIMPLES 


that directly she realised what had happened, directly 
she made Edwin feel the real meaning of it, the 
whole matter would be righted. He’d understand, 
and we’d be married as a matter of course. It seemed 
to me even that he would be anxious for it. But your 
mother . . . and then himself, when he came round 
here . . .” Her mouth twisted in torment. . . . 
“Could I ever think of marrying a man who acted 
like that? Could I force myself on any man who 
did not want me?” 

He was close to her, his hand on her arm. “But, 
Gilda—the other thing,” he said. 

“I’ll bear it,” she said quietly. 

“You can’t. Not alone,” he cried. “He must 
do his duty.” 

“No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t duty I was 
expecting from Edwin. And I won’t have any mar¬ 
riage as a duty. The thing is finished, Alban. You 
have been a true friend, truer than I deserve—and 
now you’ll not do any more, please.” 

“But think, Gilda, think . . .” 

She said with a gesture of finality, despair, “I have 
decided.” 

“You can’t have realised—facing this out alone. 

“I’ll bear it,” she said piteously. 

He was shaking her elbow fiercely, yet tenderly. 
“You won’t,” he cried. “You can’t. I won’t let 
you bear it alone. I won’t let you—you know that, 
Gilda. I’m not going to let you . . .” 

She was drawing away from him, her lips trem- 
286 


SIMPLES 


bling. “Alban,” her voice breathed. “Alban! 
Don’t ... I can’t bear that . . .” 

“I’m not going to let you bear it alone,” he in¬ 
sisted. “And you know why—you know why . . 

They stood close, eyes held by eyes, eyes seeing in 
each other’s eyes that one thing that each feared to 
mention. Gilda freed herself gently . . . 

“You always were the dearest, most obstinate 
thing, Alban,” she whispered with a touch of her old 
manner, keeping him at bay with it, yet tremulously, 
fearfully, with a fear that was afraid of herself. 
“Go home now, boy.” 

“You know,” he demanded fiercely. “You do 
know?” 

Hand on breast, she returned his gaze with eyes 
growing more pitiable under his. 

“Yes,” she whispered. “I know. That’s why it’s 
impossible—my dear.” 

He picked up his hat, laughed. Laughed again, 
looked at her, with a sudden fierce gesture caught 
her hand to his lips. 

“I’ll carry you off by force,” he said, and left her. 
iii 

Oswald, with an air of woody aloofness came out 
into the hall as Alban entered the house. 

He said: “Oh, Alban. Inhere! Please!” 

He opened the door of the morning-room, stood 
back, for all the world like a mute opening a door 
for a coffin. Alban wanted to laugh. Curious how 
287 


SIMPLES 


all his black emotions had been swept away in that 
last minute with Gilda and only an impulse to laugh 
remained—to laugh at Oswald, the whole world. 

Oswald stood stiffly near the door as though he 
could not endanger his morals by breathing the same 
air as his brother. He said stiffly, “You will catch 
the first possible train to-morrow for Margaretting.” 

“Turned out of house and home, eh?” said Alban, 
with a grin. 

Oswald’s face became severer at the grin. Also 
puzzled. He had expected argument, expostula¬ 
tion, anger—had prepared all the likely answers, in 
fact, and most of them were beauteously cutting. To 
be grinned at—most disconcerting! He could only 
say: “As to that, think what you like. You leave 
by the first train, that is all. The 9.20 will be the 
best, I think.” 

“No,” said Alban, thoughtfully. “I doubt 
whether I shall. I shall have things to do all day 
to-morrow.” 

“As you will,” said Oswald in his best mute 
manner. “But you do not enter this house after 
you have left it in the morning.” 

Alban looked at him and laughed outright. 

“I mean what I say,” snapped Oswald, sharply. 

“I saw it,” said Alban. “I’ll take lodgings.” 

Oswald’s face showed a trace of relief. Alban 
was himself leading to the conversation in which 
he (Oswald) had planned so effectively to crush 
him. So he said evenly: “I have spent the after¬ 
noon with the solicitor. I must warn you that if 
288 


SIMPLES 


you persist in your present line of conduct, if you 
take sides with this girl against your family . . .” 

Again Alban laughed. Again Oswald stopped 
disconcerted. He was angry. No Jove likes to 
have his blasting lightning snatched from him. 

Alban read his face. “Don’t worry about that. 
That’s finished.” 

Oswald felt a telegram in his pocket, reassured 
himself. “I don’t understand you,” he said. 

“Gilda is not going on,” said Alban. 

“You mean that she—she—” Oswald could not 
believe his ears. 

“This marriage with Edwin, all of it. . . . That’s 
all over. You’ll hear no more of that.” 

Oswald, gaping at him, cried in a stupefied voice, 
“You mean—you mean she’s heard?” 

“Heard what?” 

Oswald stared at him. Slowly he held out the 
telegram. On it was a message from Edwin an¬ 
nouncing his marriage, apparently by special license, 
to Mrs. Hogarth of Brackenhurst. 

Alban read it through and again laughed. He 
handed the telegram back to his brother with a ges¬ 
ture of contempt. 

“No, she hadn’t heard that . . . but it’ll help. 
We’ve got a pretty low swine for a brother, Oswald. 
I hope you’re proud of him.” 

Oswald still stared at him, puzzled. Everything 
was so unexpectedly wrong, and he wanted to get to 
the bottom of it. 


289 


SIMPLES 


“She’s made up her mind—not knowing this— 
not to go on. How? Why?” 

“She’s marrying me,” said Alban, evenly. 

iv 

Oswald, after an amazed stare, cried, “Just wait 
one moment,” and vanished from the room. 

Then his mother came in quickly with Oswald 
dragging indeterminately in her wake. He could 
see by the way she held her hands that she was full 
of rage and fear. 

“What is this Oswald has told me,” she cried. 
“Have you lost your senses, Alban. You marry that 
creature . . . ?” 

“I am going to marry Gilda Conroy,” he said. 

His mother made a quick upward movement of 
rage and despair, “How dare you! How dare you 
even mention such a thing in this house.” 

“I won’t, again,” he said, “now I have told you.” 

She stood massive, her whole figure trembling 
with passion before him. “I forbid it,” she stormed. 
“I forbid it.” 

He did not answer. It wasn’t necessary. 

“I forbid it,” she again cried passionately. “I 
absolutely refuse to allow it. You shall not marry 
that creature. A woman who shows herself the 
vilest of the vile—a shameless, debased hussy.” 

“You are talking about my future wife, Mother.” 

She started back from him: “Ough! She comes 
290 


SIMPLES 


first, does she? She comes before your own 
mother?” 

“Yes,” he answered. 

“First one son, and then the other. She causes 
trouble everywhere. Rosamund, too . . . Wanton 
trouble. That’s it, a wanton . . .” 

“I think this has lasted long enough,” said Alban. 
He walked toward the door. 

“Ah ... I see it,” she cried at him. “Edwin 
was right. . . . What Edwin said this afternoon 
about you and her. . . .” 

She stopped. Alban had swung about. She saw 
him as he had been when he leapt at Edwin for ex¬ 
actly the same accusation this afternoon, and she was 
afraid, terrified of her own son. . . . And dimly 
she remembered another occasion when she had been 
terrified of her own husband. 

“You go too far, Mother,” he said, after a 
moment. “I tried to kill Edwin for that lie this 
afternoon. That ought to have told you the truth.” 

Suddenly, because of her memory, because of her 
fear perhaps, she was a little piteous. “Alban,” she 
cried, “don’t you see I am thinking only of your 
own good?” 

“Yes, Mother, I see that,” he said after a moment. 
“But I don’t think you are right this time.” 

“Can’t you see that that girl—whatever she is, is 
merely playing on your sense of chivalry? It’s only 
quixotery on your part.” 

“Much more than that, Mother. In fact, I don’t 
think quixotery comes into it.” 

29X 


SIMPLES 


“It does,” she insisted, her tone hardening a little. 
“The mere idea of such a marriage—it’s not rational. 
Anybody can see what it means—you know what 
people will say.” 

“What anybody says doesn’t matter,” he said. 

She was keeping her temper with an effort. 
“That’s part of your—your quixotic attitude,” she 
said. “Look ahead, Alban, look to when that wears 
off. There’ll come a time when you will bitterly 
regret this step.” 

“No, Mother, I don’t think so. I’m in love with 
Gilda—always have been really, I think.” 

Her breath drew in in a sharp hiss. “That’s it,” 
she cried, her temper bettering her. “And she sees 
that. She is taking advantage of that.” 

He laughed. “What, Gilda? Oh, no, Mother, 
you are utterly wrong there.” 

Again he laughed. He was seeing Gilda as she 
had been when she held him off. He saw Gilda 
sitting in her room still certain that their love for 
each other made things impossible. . . . He saw 
Gilda, as yet unaware that he was going to marry her. 
He had to laugh at his mother’s mistake, and his 
laugh stung her afresh. 

“You’re a silly little fool,” she cried. “What do 
you know about these things? Blind! Blinded by 
a pretty face and a soft, sly manner. . . . What do 
you know about these things? Blind! Blinded by 
finger—the creature. She failed to catch one brother 
with her tricks, so she grabs at the other. She knows 
you’re soft at least, knows she can fool you —the 
292 


SIMPLES 


detestable, designing creature. She has had you in 
reserve all the time. She knows just how to get on 
your soft side, you stupid, self-sufficient little 
fool. . . ” 

Alban walked towards the door: “We’ll get no 
further, Mother, on those lines. The thing can’t 
be altered now.” 

Mrs. Kent stopped, stiffened. Her mouth shut 
tight and her eyes glared. The matter then was 
finished. Alban began to move through the door. 

His mother said in a cutting voice, “And what do 
you think you are going to live on—the pair of you?” 

v 

Alban turned not so much at her words, but at 
the implacable timbre of her voice. He stared from 
her to Oswald, who stood stiffly righteous and ex¬ 
tremely self-conscious. 

His mother said again: “And what do you pro¬ 
pose to live on? Your precious weed farm?” 

“No,” he answered slowly, “there’s no living 
there.” 

“I see,” she sneered. “The Factory?” 

“Naturally,” he said quietly, his eyes not leaving 
hers. 

“If you marry that girl,” she said coldly, “you 
are immediately dismissed from the Factory.” 

“That is rather childish, Mother,” he said, sorry 
that she should have descended to such a petty level. 

“Childish,” she cried. “You will see. Marry 
293 


SIMPLES 


that girl, and you never set foot in the Factory 
again. You have your choice.” 

“I have told you of my choice already.” 

“Very well,” she said harshly. “We wash our 
hands of you. Go your own way. The Factory 
has finished with you.” 

“Pm afraid you don’t get rid of me as easily as 
that,” he said lightly. Really his mother was ab¬ 
surdly melodramatic. “I am not giving up the 
Factory.” 

“You have nothing to say in that,” she snapped. 
“I say you are not to be employed at the Factory.” 

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, “but the will puts 
it in a different light.” 

“Your father’s will supports me—as it was meant 
to,” said his mother, implacably. 

It was then that Alban realised that this matter 
was grave. He realised it as much by the look on 
Oswald’s face as by the cold anger in his mother. 
Oswald’s face was righteous, smug. He could see 
from that look that this was Oswald’s moment of 
triumph. 

He knew he had been tricked, that he had lost 
his day, though he did not see how. He said quietly 
to test them, “The will lays it down that any son 
who chooses to enter Kent Drugs shall do so and be 
given a partnership on equal terms with any other 
son.” 

“But not a son who sets up in business on his own,” 
snapped his mother. 


294 


SIMPLES 


a I know. But I haven’t.” 

“What about the Herb Farm?” said Oswald. 

Alban fixed his brother with a contemptuous look. 
“The Herb Farm, as you know, is understood to be 
a part of Kent Drugs.” 

“Not by us,” said Oswald, quickly. 

Alban looked from one to the other. “I see,” he 
said quietly. At once he had seen the whole plot. 

“It is a distinct and separate business under the 
terms of the will,” said his mother. 

“As separate as Dunstan’s engineering,” said 
Oswald. 

“And most convenient to your aims,” said Alban, 
with a grim smile. 

Oswald squirmed. “You would go into it against 
our advice,” he mumbled. 

“Your advice, however, did not include these facts. 
You kept that carefully up your sleeve, didn’t you, 
Oswald?” 

“A solicitor would have made it plain to you,” he 
growled. 

“Whereas I was fool enough to trust my brother.” 

“Your brother had other interests to look to beside 
yours,” said his mother, firmly. “We have the fam¬ 
ily to protect. He did right.” 

“Good-night, Mother,” said Alban, and again he 
made for the door. 

“You understand the situation then?” she cried 
after him. 

“Absolutely! Knuckle under or Get Out.” 

295 


SIMPLES 


“We cannot countenance this folly about this girl. 
Unless you give her up . . .” 

“I am not giving her up. Good-night, Mother.” 
“Then you will both starve on your Farm,” she 
snapped. 

“It will be cleaner,” he said, and was gone. 


296 


Chapter XIV 


i 

A LBAN went to Gilda’s house to take her away. 

„ He had thought of many things to say, he 
had many persuasions to put forward; it might not 
be easy to win Gilda against her sense of justice. 

She came in to him slim, exquisite, gentle, un¬ 
changeably lovely and adorable despite all changes. 
It was only the woman he loved he saw—the dear 
thing that meant all things to him—nothing else. 
And he saw how she trembled, how her eyes met his 
hungrily, humbly, and something in his heart broke 
and swept away all mere logic. 

“Gilda,” he cried, “Gilda! My dear!” and he 
had her in his arms, and she was against his heart, 
shaking and clinging in one. He held her tight 
because he would never let her go again. 

He held her, kissing her hair, stroking its fineness, 
saying, “My dear! My dear!” over and over again, 
because that seemed the only, the supreme thing to 
say. And she held him, quietening gradually. 

“Alban,” she said presently, “what a dear thing 
you are. . . . But—but it isn’t right. ... Pm 
being so unfair . . . weak . . .” 

“You love me,” he said exultantly. 

“You know it, Alban. I love you . . .” 

297 


SIMPLES 


“Nothing else matters,” he said. 

Her arms tightened at that, her body pressed 
against his convulsively, she cried in a choking voice, 
“Why didn’t I know it was you from the beginning? 
Why didn’t I?” 

“It doesn’t matter, dear, we both know it now. 
And it’s all that counts.” 

They were silent for a while holding each other. 
Then: 

“It’s strange. It’s terrible. . . . Other things 
ought to count,” she whispered. 

“And they don’t,” he said. “You feel that, too, 
my dear. Everything else is gone—swept away. 
We’re just loving each other as we ought to, because 
we’ve got to. Because always in our hearts we’ve 
been lovers. All I want is you, all you want is me. 
Isn’t that it, Gilda?” 

“It oughtn’t to be,” she breathed. 

“But it is,” he laughed softly. “Isn’t it so, 
Gilda?” 

“It is so, dear,” she breathed. “I love you so 
much. I only want you . . . it’s beaten my will.” 

“Thank God,” he said. 

Presently: 

“And you’re going to marry me, Gilda. You’re 
going to marry me and come with me to Margaret- 
ting?” 

She clung tight, unable to speak. 

“You’re coming with me to the Farm, where you 
belong, where we both belong, and there we will go 
on living, like this—always. You want that, Gilda?” 
298 


SIMPLES 


She trembled, sighed. “I ought to fight it,” she 
whispered. 

“And you can’t, dear,” he smiled. 

“What traitors love makes of us, Alban,” she said. 

“No,” he laughed, “what lovers.” 

ii 

After a time she said: “We ought to be— 
sensible, Alban.” 

He smiled down into her face, “Can we be?” And 
then, “Aren’t we really being sensible for the first 
time?” 

She gently disengaged herself from him, sat away 
from him, but their hands were holding instinctively. 

“I believe that is right,” she said. “But—but 
there ought to be talk about—about a lot of things.” 

“So I thought when I came here,” he smiled. “I 
thought there was much to say, many reasons and 
arguments to put forward. I was prepared. But 
they aren’t of value, really. They’re futile. You 
and I and this thing that has come so certainly to us 
are the only things that count.” 

“There’s your future,” she said. 

“That is my future, living with you at the Farm. 
It is the thing we love best; it is the thing that will 
enable us to fulfil ourselves best.” 

Her lips twisted a little, her eyes dropped, she 
whispered huskily, “There are—are other things, 
Alban . . . what I’ve done . . .” 

He put his hands on her shoulders: “They don’t 
299 


SIMPLES 


count. Look at me, Gilda, you see they don’t count, 
you know in your heart they don’t count. . . 

“Alban,” she said, looking at him, “Alban . . . 
You dear, fine thing.” 

“Well, then,” he said briskly, “we are going to 
be sensible. Everything that’s gone before is— 
finished. It’s even like a bad dream. We go down 
to Margaretting, we live and work. ... I’m afraid 
it’s going to be hard, Gilda, hard at first.” 

“Do 1 mind that?” she smiled. “Why, I ask for 
that—hardness, to prove myself. But why should 
it be hard?” 

He told her. He told her very simply what had 
happened. How he had to leave the Factory, how 
all he—they—had to live on now was the Farm, 
and how hard would be the battle for them until 
they made the Farm pay. Hard for her as well as 
him. 

“I’d like nothing better,” she told him proudly. 
“I’d welcome it’s very hardness. But you—the Fac¬ 
tory, your ambition?” 

He spread his hands. “It’s gone. And the Farm 
is just as good an ambition.” 

She suddenly realised the thing he had tried to 
soften to her, her part in his dismissal. 

“But it’s me. . . . I’ve come between you and 
the Factory, between you and your mother. . . . 
Alban! . . .” 

“They are some of the things that don’t matter, 
my dear.” 

“But Alban, I can’t ... it was me.” 

300 


SIMPLES 


“No, dear, I don’t think it was. Honestly, I 
don’t think it was. It was me. This move of my 
mother’s isn’t a new thing. It was planned long 
ago. I frightened her and Oswald, you see. It 
was my nature, the way I looked at things, that 
scared them. They saw in my ideas a danger to the 
Factory and to the family, and—and they felt they 
had to protect themselves. We must be fair to 
them. I don’t think they intended using the weapon 
against me as they did. They hoped that perhaps 
with the years I’d change. But I’m unchanging, 
and so, well, they beat me, got rid of me.” 

“But—but if it wasn’t for me they might take you 
back, Alban?” 

“Only if I changed—and I can’t change. You 
know that. You wouldn’t have me change.” 

“I wouldn’t have it,” she said. “But to lose the 
Factory.” 

“There’s the Farm.” 

“But that’s not the big thing you wanted, Alban.” 

“It has compensations,” he smiled at her. “It 
has—you.” 

She looked at him, smiled tremulously, flung her 
arms about him. 

“Alban,” she cried, “I’ll make it up to you. I 
will! I will!” 


v 


301 


Qhapter XV 

S HE had made it up. 

If she had had anything to make up she had 
done it, and more. She had made their life, hard 
though it had been, a thing of beauty and joy. Al¬ 
most he had not noticed how hard it had been for 
sheer happiness. 

She had worked, she had been behind his work 
always, strengthening him with her touch, inspiring 
him with the steady, soft valour of her glance. Her 
spirit had kept his enthusiasms singing, her sweetness 
had kept the little house sweet. 

Yes, it had been hard. With the Farm not pay¬ 
ing, not meant to be paying just then, it was only by 
dint of working like slaves, by cutting things down 
almost to bare necessities, that they were able to hang 
on at all. Only by keeping at it day in, day out, and 
into the night, for months and months, were they 
able to pull round into bare solvency at all. 

It was terrible work for a girl gently nurtured. 
There was no servant, they could not afford that. 
She took over all the household duties, and some of 
the book-work, and when needed lent a hand in the 
fields, too. She worked almost beyond her strength, 
Alban thought—but always her fine courage enabled 
her to summon up fresh reserves of strength, and 
smiling and indomitable she kept on. 

302 


SIMPLES 


When Alban, looking at her anxiously, said: “We 
must get help. We can’t go on like this. It’ll kill 
you.” 

“It’s making a woman of me,” she laughed back. 
“And if we get help—well, it’ll be for the fields. 
Do you know you are putting in a seventeen-hour 
day seven days a week, Alban, in fields and sheds?” 

Well, he had to. They had to cut down manual 
workers if they were to hold on at all. But he had 
expected his share, he was hardened, anyhow. . . . 
But Gilda—it was a miracle she pulled through. 

It was harder for her when the baby came, for she 
had to combine the duties of nurse with that of cook, 
house-maid, scrub-woman, and wife. But she man¬ 
aged even that, her gallantry and endurance were 
miraculous. 

Rosamund helped as nurse after a time. She in¬ 
sisted that the baby should be called Joan, “after my 
bobbed hair,” she said, and she came down to the cot¬ 
tage as a sort of “paying godmother.” That was 
the way she silenced their protests. She had become 
something of a fashion now as an illustrator of those 
classics which nobody reads, but which are sumptu¬ 
ously produced and unloaded in large quantities on 
unprotesting innocents by way of Christmas gifts. 
Most of this work she did in spring and summer, and 
she came down to Moap’s Farm to do it, and acting 
as nurse seemed an essential part of it. She got 
peace and beauty and happiness there, but that wasn’t 
all she was thinking of. The extravagant sum she 
insisted on paying for her room helped to keep things 
303 


SIMPLES 


going. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for that, and for 
financial help sent by Dunstan and Mr. Conroy, they 
could not have turned the corner at all. 

But they turned it. Slowly things straightened 
out, as things will if one hammers at them hard and 
long enough. A big London firm took over the 
drug output that should have gone to Kent Drugs, 
but which Kent Drugs refused to buy from a moral 
outcast, and at an enhanced price. A Belladonna 
crop turned out to be a bumper, and firms began to 
compete for the output, because of the excellence 
of the strains. 

Hard work, but they won out in time, began even 
to put money by, began even to have ambitions. 
“One of these days,” Alban laughed, “I’ll mortgage 
Joan and buy or lease extra land along the Bottom. 
I’ll put in more Belladonna and we’ll be rich beyond 
the dreams of profiteers.” 

“Pooh,” Gilda smiled, “that’s not an adequate 
return for Joan, and you know it.” 

“She knows the secrets of my very soul,” he 
smiled, and he tilted her chin up to kiss her. 

“Contented?” she asked. 

“There never was such contentment, dear,” he 
smiled. “All the same it would be jolly to have that 
land and feel that we—and Joan were safe for life.” 

“It’ll come,” she said. 

It came. It was in the very letter Rosamund sent 
them, telling of Aunt Heppie’s death. When Alban 
read as far as that he stopped and thought of all that 
304 


SIMPLES 


Aunt Heppie had meant. When Gilda came to his 
side he was still in thought. 

“From Rosamund?” she asked, nodding at the 
letter. “Any news?” 

“Aunt Heppie’s dead,” he said, handing her the 
letter. 

“Aunt Heppie—poor, dear old thing. She made 
me tremble the first time I saw her.” 

“There was more than that to it, I think,” he 
laughed. 

She looked up, a lovely flashing glance. “Much 
more,” she murmured, “she made me blush. She 
was the first to give me the news that I loved you. 
And you. ... I rather liked Aunt Heppie, really, 
there was more in her than met the eye.” She went 
on reading, and then said in a startled voice. “Much 
more—why didn’t you tell me, Alban?” 

“Tell you what, old darling?” 

“Why you haven’t even read it. . . . Listen. 
‘Aunt Heppie as Aunt Heppie as ever in her will,’ 
says Rosamund, ‘she set the family gasping. . . . 
Not altogether unjoyous to a cynic like me. The 
reason —you are her will, Alban. Everything goes 
to you. Her interests in Kent Drugs—how un¬ 
pleasant for Oswald—and all her cash. You’ll hear 
from the lawyer all about it, but, you dear, I must 
get in first. You’re worth nearly £10,000 in hard 
coin at least.’ ” 

“Great heavens,” gasped Alban. Gilda read on. 

“ ‘The reason she leaves it all to you—the old 
darling, how I wish I had loved her!—is that you 

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SIMPLES 


are the only real Kent, with any hint of backbone in 
you. Isn’t it amazing coming from her?’ ” 

“It is amazing,” said Alban, “the old dear.” 

“Is it?” said Gilda, with her quiet smile. “I won¬ 
der? I rather think she saw you more clearly than 
any of us. I wish, like Rosamund, I’d loved her.” 
She moved to his side. “So it has come,” she said. 

“What?” 

“The new land in the Bottom.” 

“Yes,” said Alban. “It means that, and much 
more than that.” 

“We don’t want too much more,” she whispered. 

“No,” he agreed. “We couldn’t be richer, in the 
things that matter. But this is solid earth under our 
feet at last, Gilda. We’re out of the woods, old 
girl.” 

“Only they weren’t woods,” she said, “they were 
groves in Arcadia.” 


THE END 


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